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Introduction Apresentação

Cognitive representations and beliefs are what comprise an individual’s self-concept. A positive self-concept is related to and influences academic achievement, and the relationship between a domain-specific self-concept and achievement in the same domain is positive and strong. However, insufficient attention has been paid to these issues among multilingual children. More importantly, since instruction strongly contributes to the development of metacognition and executive functions (EFs), and since the bilingual advantage hypothesis holds that the constant management of multiple languages entails benefits for EF, we bring together these important issues in the present study. We examine the relationship between domain-specific self-concepts and standardized assessment of reading and spelling competences against the background of potential differences in self-concept between monolingual and multilingual German children. While between-group comparisons revealed no significant differences for self-concept nor reading competency, monolinguals outperformed multilinguals in spelling. Correlations between domain-specific self-concepts and academic achievement in reading comprehension, reading fluency, and spelling were positive and significant for both groups. Regardless of language background, children’s evaluations of their academic achievement (reading and spelling) were realistic. We argue, on a theoretical basis, that metacognition and EFs could facilitate a bilingual advantage and improve educational outcomes.

Working memory based limitations have increasingly been proposed as a way of explaining differences between native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing. However, while there has been increasing interest in the role that working memory may play in L2 sentence processing, different approaches to L2 processing rely on different conceptualisations of the role that working memory plays in sentence processing. These different conceptualisations lead to different predictions about both the source of L1/L2 differences in sentence processing, and how individual differences in L2 processing should be measured. In this chapter, I critically evaluate different models of working memory during L2 sentence comprehension, review existing studies that have examined how working memory influences L2 sentence processing, and discuss the importance of considering how individual differences in working memory and sentence processing can be measured.

This chapter provides a review of studies on working memory (WM) and interpreting between the 1970s and 2010s, with special attention paid to simultaneous interpreting (SI) and consecutive interpreting (CI). Previous research has investigated three major issues: (1) the interpreter’s advantage over noninterpreters in WM capacity and executive control; (2) the relationship between overall WM capacity, WM executive control and interpreting performance, and (3) the interaction that takes place between long-term memory and WM to facilitate meaning retrieval from the source language, interlingual reformulation, and message delivery into the target language. This chapter will first review major WM models of interpreting to determine what SI and CI have in common and how they differ in processing routes; secondly by examining relevant empirical evidence that (in)validates such models, and thirdly by proposing new possibilities for research on WM in both SI and CI. By means of a synthesized review and an in-depth comparative analysis, this chapter will shed new light on how WM demand differs across interpreting tasks and fluctuates during the interpreting process, which will in turn contribute to future interpreting research and pedagogy.

Humour has been deemed a special language competency, or more extremely, humour has been seen as a form of mastery over a given language, as well as the culture, norms, and themes associated with the people speaking this language. This chapter provides an overview of fundamental issues concerning humour and a review of the state of the art literature from an interdisciplinary perspective. It focuses on issues of the humour and language, as well as the translation of humour from one language to another. The chapter elaborates on the processing of humour in the brain, presents a review on the currently existing studies, and briefly elaborates on humour and language learning. It differentiates between humour processing as a cognitive task, amusement as the emotional response to humour, and the motor/behavioural reactions (smiling or laughter). The chapter presents a conclusion on the reviewed studies and offers hypotheses on humour and the multilingual brain.

This chapter provides an overview of the major contemporary trends driving adult, non-native language acquisition and processing research from a formal linguistic theory perspective. In doing so, we contextualize for the reader what formal linguistics is, inclusive of the main tenets of generative grammar. We provide an overview of the formative questions of generative second language acquisition (GenSLA), focusing on how they have been recast/refocused over time in accord with: (a) the evolution of formal linguistic theory, (b) insights from GenSLA’s own research over three decades and other paradigms of SLA, as well as (c) the expansion of empirical testing methods to include psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic processing measures. All of the aforementioned is done with the backdrop of adult language learning in mind; that is, what do formal linguistic studies on adult non-native language acquisition and processing contribute to our understanding of how L2ers typically learn/process language?