The present study examined whether monolinguals and balanced bilinguals perceive speech sounds similarly or whether the two phonological systems in bilinguals interact so that one language is affected by the other. Two groups, monolingual native speakers of Finnish and balanced Finnish-Swedish bilinguals, were tested. We measured mismatch negativity (MMN) responses and used individually selecte...

It is well established that early bilinguals can accurately produce and perceive sounds in both of their languages (e.g. Flege and Eefting, 1987, Sundara, Polk, and Baum, 2006; but see also below). This applies both to sounds that occur in only one of the two languages and to sounds that are common to both but differ at the phonetic level. For example, the trilled /r/ in Spanish and the approxi...

The aim of this study was to analyze the performance of Spanish-English bilinguals on the Golden Stroop Test. The effects of bilingualism, participants' age, age of acquisition of the second language, and proficiency in each language were analyzed. Participants consisted of 71 Spanish-English bilinguals, 40 English monolinguals, and 11 Spanish monolinguals from South Florida. Proficiency in Spa...

The frequency-lag hypothesis proposes that bilinguals have slowed lexical retrieval relative to monolinguals and in their nondominant language relative to their dominant language, particularly for low-frequency words. These effects arise because bilinguals divide their language use between 2 languages and use their nondominant language less frequently. We conducted a picture-naming study with h...

The present investigation examined the functioning of inhibitory mechanisms in younger and older bilinguals using a bilingual version of the Stroop test. The study predicted different patterns of age related decline in inhibitory mechanisms (inter- and intralingual interference) in bilinguals depending on their level of proficiency. Consistent with expectations, older bilinguals were slower whe...

Many studies in the past decade have shown that "earlier is better" as far as learning a second language (L2) is concerned. That is, individuals who began learning their L2 in late adolescence or early adulthood ("late bilinguals") usually resemble native speakers of the L2 less than individuals who began learning their L2 in childhood ("early bilinguals") do. Early bilinguals have been shown t...

Previous research has mainly considered the impact of tone-language experience on ability to discriminate linguistic pitch, but proficient bilingual listening requires differential processing of sound variation in each language context. Here, we ask whether Mandarin-English bilinguals, for whom pitch indicates word distinctions in one language but not the other, can process pitch differently in...

The applicability of Flege’s Speech Learning Model (SLM) to simultaneous bilinguals is examined in related experiments on the acquisition of the production and perception of the voicing contrast in simultaneous French-English bilinguals. The results show that the SLM can account for the data providing account is taken of the degree of bilinguals’ exposure to each language.

Bilinguals often outperform monolinguals on nonverbal tasks that require resolving conflict from competing alternatives. The regular need to select a target language is argued to enhance executive control. We investigated whether this enhancement stems from a general effect of bilingualism (the representation of two languages) or from a modality constraint that forces language selection. Bimoda...

Several lines of evidence suggest the importance of phonological working memory (PWM) in language acquisition. We investigated the neural correlates of PWM in young adults who were under compelling social pressure to be bilingual. Equal bilinguals had high proficiency in English and Chinese as measured by a standardized examination, whereas unequal bilinguals were proficient in English but not ...