Chapter published in:
Bilingualism, Executive Function, and Beyond: Questions and insights
Edited by Irina A. Sekerina, Lauren Spradlin and Virginia Valian
[Studies in Bilingualism 57] 2019
► pp. 35–47

Variation in language experience shapes the consequences of bilingualism

| University of California, Riverside
| University of Washington
| University of California
The use of two languages is common, but the circumstances that give rise to bilingualism are diverse. Recent discussions about the consequences of bilingualism have focused on how variation in language experience and use may differentially shape the engagement of cognitive control. In this paper, we illustrate the role of language variation in the observed consequences of bilingualism for language processing, language learning, and the neural mechanisms that support them. Like Green and Abutalebi (2013), we argue that the neurocognitive consequences of bilingualism are shaped by the specific ways in which the two languages are engaged. That process may reflect individual variation in cognitive control, experience with language regulation, and the influence of the environment in which the two languages were learned and are used actively. The emerging pattern is complex but systematic, with the influence of language experience sometimes revealed in behavior but often seen only in brain activity.
Keywords: bilingualism, neuroscience, individual variation, language regulation, cognitive control
Published online: 12 June 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.57.03zir
References

References

Alladi, S., Bak, T. H., Mekala, S., Rajan, A., Chaudhuri, J. R., Mioshi, E., Krovvidi, R., Surampudi, B., Duggirala, V., & Kaul, S.
(2015) Impact of bilingualism on cognitive outcome after stroke. Stroke, 47, 258–261. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bak, T. H., Vega-Mendoza, M., & Sorace, A.
(2014) Never too late? An advantage on tests of auditory attention extends to late bilinguals. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 485. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baus, C., Costa, A., & Carreiras, M.
(2013) On the effects of second language immersion on first language production. Acta Psychologica, 142, 402–409. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Beatty-Martínez, A. L., & Dussias, P. E.
(2017) Bilingual experience shapes language processing: Evidence from codeswitching. Journal of Memory and Language, 95, 173–189. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., Craik, F., Grady, C., Chau, W., Ishii, R., Gunji, A., & Pantev, C.
(2005) Effect of bilingualism on cognitive control in the Simon task: Evidence from MEG. Neuroimage, 24, 40–49. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bice, K., & Kroll, J. F.
(2015) Native language change during early stages of second language learning. NeuroReport, 26, 966–971. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bjork, R. A., & Kroll, J. F.
(2015) Desirable difficulties in vocabulary learning. American Journal of Psychology, 128, 241–252. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Blanco-Elorrieta, E., & Pylkkänen, L.
(2016) Bilingual language switching in the lab vs. in the wild: The spatio-temporal dynamics of adaptive language control. Journal of Neuroscience 36(2), 290–301.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Blumstein, S. E., & Amso, D.
(2013) Dynamic functional organization of language: Insights from functional neuroimaging. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 44–48. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Keys, B. A., Carter, C. S., Cohen, J. D., Kaye, J. A., … Reed, B. R.
(2001) Context processing in older adults: Evidence for a theory relating cognitive control to neurobiology in healthy aging. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 746–763. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J. D., Barch, D. M., Carter, C., & Servan-Schreiber, D.
(1999) Context-processing deficits in schizophrenia: Converging evidence from three theoretically motivated cognitive tasks. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 120–133. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Costa, A., & Santesteban, M.
(2004) Lexical access in bilingual speech production: Evidence from language switching in highly proficient bilinguals and L2 learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 491–511. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Baene, W., Duyck, W., Brass, M., & Carreiras, M.
(2015) Brain circuit for cognitive control is shared by task and language switching. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 27, 1752–1765. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Bruin, A., Treccani, B., & Della Sala, S.
(2015) Cognitive advantage in bilingualism: An example of publication bias? Psychological Science, 26, 99–107. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Emmorey, K., Luk, G., Pyers, J. E., & Bialystok, E.
(2008) The source of enhanced cognitive control in bilinguals: Evidence from bimodal bilinguals. Psychological Science, 19, 1201–1206. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Federmeier, K. D., Wlotko, E., De Ochoa-Dewald, E., & Kutas, M.
(2007) Multiple effects of sentential constraint on word processing. Brain Research, 1146, 75–84. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fricke, M., Kroll, J. F., & Dussias, P. E.
(2016) Phonetic variation in bilingual speech: A lens for studying the production–comprehension link. Journal of Memory and Language, 89, 110–137. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fricke, M., Zirnstein, M., Navarro-Torres, C. A., & Kroll, J. F.
(2018) Bilingualism reveals fundamental variation in language processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1–18. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, N. P., & Miyake, A.
(2004) The relations among inhibition and interference control functions: A latent-variable analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 101–135. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
García-Pentón, L., García, Y. F., Costello, B., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Carreiras, M.
(2016) The neuroanatomy of bilingualism: how to turn a hazy view into the full picture. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 31, 303–327. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gold, B. T., Kim, C., Johnson, N. F., Kryscio, R. J., & Smith, C. D.
(2013) Lifelong bilingualism maintains neural efficiency for cognitive control in aging. The Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 387–396. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Green, D.
(1998) Mental control of the bilingual lexico-semantic system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, 67–81. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J.
(2013) Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 515–530. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Green, D. W., & Wei, L.
(2016) Code-switching and language control. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 883–884. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Grosjean, F.
(1989) Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person. Brain and Language, 36, 3–15. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gullifer, J. W., Kroll, J. F., & Dussias, P. E.
(2013) When language switching has no apparent cost: Lexical access in sentence context. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 278. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Guo, T., Liu, H., Misra, M., & Kroll, J. F.
(2011) Local and global inhibition in bilingual word production: fMRI evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals. NeuroImage, 56, 2300–2309. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S., & Wodniecka, Z.
(2006) Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9, 119–135. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Dussias, P. E.
(2013) The comprehension of words and sentences in two languages. In T. Bhatia & W. Ritchie (Eds.). The Handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism (2nd ed., pp. 216–243). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell Publishers. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Gollan, T. H.
(2014) Speech planning in two languages: What bilinguals tell us about language production. In V. Ferreira, M. Goldrick, & M. Miozzo (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language production (pp. 165–181). Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Linck, J. A., Kroll, J. F., & Sunderman, G.
(2009) Losing access to the native language while immersed in a second language: Evidence for the role of inhibition in second language learning. Psychological Science, 20, 1507–1515. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Meuter, R. F. I., & Allport, A.
(1999) Bilingual language switching in naming: asymmetrical costs of language selection. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, 25–40. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Midgley, K. J., Holcomb, P. J., & Grainger, J.
(2011) Effects of cognate status on word comprehension in second language learners: An ERP investigation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 1634–1647. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Misra, M., Guo, T., Bobb, S. C., & Kroll, J. F.
(2012) When bilinguals choose a single word to speak: Electrophysiological evidence for inhibition of the native language. Journal of Memory and Language, 67, 224–237. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Morales, J., Gómez-Ariza, C. J., & Bajo, M. T.
(2013) Dual mechanisms of cognitive control in bilinguals and monolinguals. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 531–546. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nuechterlein, K. H.
(1991) Vigilance in schizophrenia and related disorders. In S. R. Steinhauer, J. H. Gruzelier, & J. Zubin (Eds.), Handbook of schizophrenia, Vol. 5: Neuropsychology, psychophysiology, and information processing (pp. 397–433). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Olulade, O. A., Jamal, N. I., Koo, D. S., Perfetti, C. A., LaSasso, C., & Eden, G. F.
(2016) Neuroanatomical evidence in support of the bilingual advantage theory. Cerebral Cortex, 26, 3196–3204. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ong, G., Sewell, D. K., Weekes, B., McKague, M., & Abutalebi, J.
(2017) A diffusion model approach to analyzing the bilingual advantage for the Flanker task: The role of attentional control processes. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 43, 28–38.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Osterhout, L., & Holcomb, P. J.
(1995) Event-related brain potentials and language comprehension. In M. D. Rugg & M. G. H. Coles (Eds.), Electrophysiology of mind: Event-related brain potentials and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pivneva, I., Mercier, J., & Titone, D.
(2014) Executive control modulates cross-language lexical activation during L2 reading: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 40, 787–796. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schmid, M. S., Köpke, B., Keijzer, M., & Weilemar, L.
(2004) First Language Attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Valdés Kroff, J. R., Dussias, P. E., Gerfen, C., Perotti, L., & Bajo, M. T.
(2017) Experience with code-switching modulates the use of grammatical gender during sentence processing. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 7(2), 163–198. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Valian, V.
(2015) Bilingualism and cognition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18, 3–24. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Van Assche, E., Duyck, W., & Gollan, T. H.
(2013) Whole-language and item-specific control in bilingual language production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 9, 1781–1792. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, H., Kang, C., Wu, Y., Ma, F., & Guo, T.
(2015) Improving proactive control with training on language switching in bilinguals. Neuroreport, 26, 354–359. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zirnstein, M., van Hell, J. G., & Kroll, J. F.
(2018) Cognitive control ability mediates prediction costs in monolinguals and bilinguals. Cognition, 176, 87–106. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Beatty-Martínez, Anne L. & Debra A. Titone
2021. The Quest for Signals in Noise: Leveraging Experiential Variation to Identify Bilingual Phenotypes. Languages 6:4 ► pp. 168 ff. Crossref logo
Jiao, Lu, Cong Liu, John W. Schwieter & Baoguo Chen
2021. Switching between newly learned languages impacts executive control. Psychophysiology 58:10 Crossref logo
Khodos, Iryna & Christo Moskovsky
2020. Dimensions of bilingualism promoting cognitive control. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Kroll, Judith F., Andrea Takahesu Tabori & Christian Navarro-Torres
2021. Capturing the variation in language experience to understand language processing and learning. Language, Interaction and Acquisition 12:1 ► pp. 82 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 21 october 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.