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Introduction: Research to date has focused on the associations between spelling and (i) its precursors (phonological information processing and language) and (ii) socioeconomic status and bilingualism. Studies have also indicated that bilingualism and parental education are associated with spelling precursors. Whereas these associations have previously been analyzed individually, this study proposes a mediation model in which the effects of socioeconomic status and bilingualism on spelling are mediated by phonological information processing and language skills. Methods: A total of 1,012 German-speaking first graders attending primary schools in Austria were assessed at the beginning of the first grade on their phonological information processing and language abilities, and their spelling abilities were tested again at the end of the first grade. Subsequently, a structural equation modeling approach was employed to evaluate the mediation model. Results: In line with the mediation hypothesis, the results show indirect effects of parental education (as a measure of socioeconomic status) on spelling via language and phonological information processing. In addition to mediation, we also found a direct effect of SES on spelling performances. For bilingualism, the results support full mediation as an indirect effect via language abilities. Notably, we found no effect of bilingual status on phonological information processing. Discussion: This study highlights the ongoing need for systematic oral language training for bilingual children and children from low-SES backgrounds that starts in preschool and continues throughout primary school. Moreover, given the predictive effect of phonological awareness on spelling achievement, phonological awareness should be part of the training for preschool and school-aged children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A wide range of tools have been used to assess the language proficiency of bilingual speakers. The validity and high reliability of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity measures as instruments for measuring language proficiency have been demonstrated in previous studies across different languages. However, the relationship between self-assessment and the two measures has not yet been investigated. The present study focused on the Italophone bilingual language speakers, an understudied minority diglossic community in Croatia, and investigated whether measures of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity reflect self-assessment of language proficiency in the standard Italian language and the Istrovenetian dialect overall and in four specific domains (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). In addition, we aimed to investigate whether there are possible differences in self-assessment between the standard Italian language and the Istrovenetian dialect and whether there are language varietyrelated differences (standard vs. dialect) in the relationship between selfassessment and measures of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity. The results showed an intricate interplay between self-assessment and the lexical diversity and syntactic complexity of bilingual speech. This suggests that these measures are interrelated and that heritage bilingual language speakers may be able to objectively assess their language proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This article analyses parents' and children's attitudes toward the different literacy practices across three different contexts (at home, in a community project, and, indirectly, at school) and how they perceive the interaction between these practices and the development of competences in the Heritage Language (HL). We investigate the relevance of family and community, and how mainstream school influences the co-construction of literacy practices that affect the development of HL, while at the same time supporting the development of the majority language, and especially in broadening the understanding of the notion of language exposure. Methods: Semi structured interviews with parents and focus groups with children (aged 4-14) were carried out in Munich, Germany, between May 2018 and February 2020. Data from the verbal interactions, in a total of 12 h of recorded audio with the parents and 8h with the children, was transcribed and the excerpts were coded in Nvivo. In a first moment, a data and theory driven thematic analysis with open data coding was undertaken; subsequently, discourse analysis was used to analyze selected excerpts individually and reconstruct the meaning the participants were attaching to their literacy practices. Three thematic strands were identified. Results: We make the case that exposure to literacy practices in the majority language is interpreted and (re)appropriated by families and communities to support the development of complex and integrated literacy practices involving the different languages of children's repertoires. We shed light on how families construct bilingual input safe spaces at home, i.e., spaces where continuities between formal, informal and non-formal literacy practices in both German and Portuguese are assured. Discussion: The results bring a critical perspective on the ecology of literacy practices and highlight the added value of seeing those practices interconnected holistically from a co-developmental viewpoint. Such interconnectedness has a potential positive impact not only in children's HL but also in the majority language, and possibly in the languages learnt at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an investigation of reference production in 84 Italian-Spanish bilingual children aged 8 to 12. The study explores whether such reference production is influenced by either the type of referential expression involved or language dominance by analyzing how these children manage reference. The children's relative proficiency in the two languages (and thus their language dominance) was assessed through a cloze-test, and their narrative production was evaluated using a retelling task. Results indicated a preference for null pronouns to refer to subjects and full referential expressions for objects, with Italian showing a higher occurrence of full referential expressions. Dominance in either language did not significantly impact reference production. This suggests that bilingual children can distinguish between language-specific patterns, a behavior consistent with adult monolingual groups. These results contribute to our understanding of bilingual reference management and shed light on the role played by language and language dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Critical Period Hypothesis, successful language learning is optimal during early childhood, whereas language learning outside of this time window is unsuccessful. In this respect, early language acquisition is viewed as convergent and reliable but late acquisition is not. The present study revisits the idea of a critical period by investigating the grammatical attainment of early bilinguals/heritage speakers (HSs), late second/foreign language (L2) learners, and comparable groups of monolinguals by testing Greek-English bilinguals in the two languages they speak by means of a grammaticality judgment task. Our findings show that in English, HSs performed on par with monolinguals, both groups surpassing the late L2 learners, who performed about 2 SDs below the HSs and the monolinguals. In Greek, late L2 learners and monolinguals exhibited comparable performance, contrasting sharply with the HSs' significantly lower proficiency, which was on average about 5 SDs below the late L2 learners and the monolinguals. Consequently, our results show that the performance gaps between HSs and Greek monolinguals/late L2 learners were more pronounced than the differences between late L2 learners and English monolinguals/HSs, suggesting that the early bilinguals' success in English may come at the expense of their heritage language (Greek). Furthermore, we observe substantially more individual variation within HSs in their heritage language than within the late L2 learners for their second language. Thus, testing bilinguals in both of their languages allows us to unveil the complexity of grammatical ultimate attainment and prompt a re-thinking of age as the major determining factor of (un)successful attainment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently available data show mixed results as to whether the processing of emotional information has the same characteristics in the native (L1) as in the second language (L2) of bilinguals. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to shed light on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying bilinguals' emotional processing in L1 and L2 during an emotional interference task (i.e., the Emotional Stroop Task - EST). Our sample comprised proficient Italian-English bilinguals who learned their L2 during childhood mainly in instructional rather than immersive contexts. In spite of no detectable behavioural effects, we found stronger brain activations for L1 versus L2 emotional words in sectors of the posteromedial cortex involved in attention modulation, episodic memory, and affective processing. While fMRI findings are consistent with the hypothesis of a stronger emotional resonance when processing words in a native language, our overall pattern of results points to the different sensitivity of behavioural and hemodynamic responses to emotional information in the two languages of bilingual speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined grammatical gender processing in school-aged children with varying levels of cumulative English exposure. Children participated in a visual world paradigm with a four-picture display where they heard a gendered article followed by a target noun and were in the context where all images were the same gender (same gender), where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender than the target noun (different gender), and where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender, but there was a mismatch in the gendered article and target noun pair. We investigated 51 children (aged 5;0– 10;0) who were exposed to Spanish since infancy but varied in their amount of cumulative English exposure. In addition to the visual word paradigm, all children completed an article–noun naming task, a grammaticality judgment task, and standardized vocabulary tests. Parents reported on their child’s cumulative English language exposure and current English language use. To investigate the time course of lexical facilitation effects, looks to the target were analyzed with a cluster-based permutation test. The results revealed that all children used gender in a facilitatory way (during the noun region), and comprehension was significantly inhibited when the article–noun pairing was ungrammatical rather than grammatical. Compared to children with less cumulative English exposure, children with more cumulative English exposure looked at the target noun significantly less often overall, and compared to younger children, older children looked at the target noun significantly more often overall. Additionally, children with lower cumulative English exposure looked at target nouns more in the different-gender condition than the same-gender condition for masculine items more than feminine items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Language delay cannot be ignored, and there is an urgent need to determine therapies that elicit better results in a short period. However, whether transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) alone or in combination with other therapies can promote recovery of language and cognitive function in children with language delay remains unknown. This study aims to explore the effects of tDCS combined with language-cognitive training and home-based rehabilitation on language and cognitive ability in children with language delay. Methods: Children with language delay who visited the Department of rehabilitation medicine or the pediatric outpatient clinic of the First People’s Hospital of Foshan from January 2019 to December 2021, totaling 190 in number, were included and randomly divided into 4 groups, i.e., the family guidance group, the tDCS group, the language-cognitive training group, and the comprehensive training group. The family guidance group (47 cases) received home training. The tDCS group (46 cases) received home training and tDCS treatment. The language- cognitive training group (49 cases) adopted home training and language-cognitive training. The comprehensive training group (48 cases) took home training, language-cognitive training, and tDCS treatment. All groups received training 5 times a week for 4 weeks. The Sign-significant relations (S-S) test was applied to evaluate the language comprehension, language expression, basic learning ability, and attitude of communication of the children. Results: The language-cognitive training group and the comprehensive training group showed improvement after treatment (p < 0.05) regarding basic learning ability. The communication attitude of the four groups improved after intervention (p < 0.05). Particularly, the comprehensive training group had maximum improvement after intervention. No serious adverse reactions such as epilepsy, headache, and behavioral abnormalities were found. Conclusion: tDCS combined with language-cognitive training and home training can improve language and cognitive ability in children with language delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This paper studies the pragmatic force that heritage speakers may convey through the use of the diminutive in everyday speech. In particular, I analyze the use of the Spanish diminutive in 49 sociolinguistic interviews from a Spanish–English bilingual community in Southern Arizona, U.S. where Spanish is the heritage language. I compare the use of the diminutive in heritage Spanish to the distribution of the diminutive in the speech of a Spanish monolingual community (18 sociolinguistic interviews) from the same dialectal region. Although Spanish and English employ dierent morphosyntactic strategies to express diminutive meaning, the analysis reveals that the diminutive morpheme -ito/a is a productive morphological device in the Spanish-discourse of heritage speakers from Southern Arizona (i.e., similar diminutive distributions to their monolingual counterparts). While heritage speakers employed the diminutive -ito/a to express the notion of “smallness” in their Spanish-discourse, the analysis indicates that these language users are more likely to invoke a subjective evaluation through the diminutive -ito/a when talking about their family members and/or childhood experiences. This particular finding suggests that the concept “child” is the semantic/pragmatic driving force of the diminutive in heritage Spanish as a marker of speech by, about, to, or with some relation to children. The analysis further suggests that examining the pragmatic dimensions of the diminutive in everyday speech can provide important insights into how heritage speakers encode and create cultural meaning in their heritage languages. Methods: In this study, I analyze the use of Spanish diminutives in two U.S.- Mexico border regions. The first data set is representative of a Spanish–English bilingual community in Southern Arizona, U.S., provided in the Corpus del Español en el Sur de Arizona (The CESA Corpus). The CESA Corpus comprises 49 sociolinguistic interviews of ∼1 h each for a total of ∼305,542 words. The second data set comprises 18 sociolinguistic interviews of predominantly monolingual Spanish speakers from the city of Mexicali, Baja California in Mexico, provided in the Proyecto Para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de América (PRESEEA). The Mexicali data set consists of ∼119,162 words. Results: The analysis revealed that the Spanish diminutive morpheme -ito/a is a productive morphological device in the Spanish-discourse of heritage speakers from Southern Arizona. In addition to its prototypical meaning (i.e., the notion of “smallness”), the diminutive morpheme -ito/a conveyed an array of pragmatic functions in the everyday speech of Spanish heritage speakers and their monolingual counterparts from the same dialectal region. Importantly these pragmatic functions are mediated by speakers’ subjective perceptions of the entity in question. Unlike their monolingual counterparts, heritage speakers are more likely to invoke a subjective evaluation through the diminutive - ito/a when talking about their family members and/or childhood experiences. Altogether, the study suggests that the concept “child” is the semantic/pragmatic driving force of the diminutive in heritage Spanish as a marker of speech by, about, to, or with some relation to children. Discussion: In this study, I followed Reynoso’s framework to study the pragmatic dimensions of the diminutive in everyday speech, that is, speakers’ publicly conveyed meaning. The analysis revealed that heritage speakers applied most of the pragmatic functions and their respective values observed in Reynoso’s cross-dialectal study of Spanish diminutives, and hence providing further support for her framework. Similarly, the study provides further evidence to Jurafsky’s proposal that morphological diminutives arise from semantic or pragmatic links with children. Finally, the analysis indicated that examining the semantic/pragmatic dimensions of the diminutive in everyday speech can provide important insights into how heritage speakers encode and create cultural meaning in their heritage languages, which can in turn have further ramifications for heritage language learning and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communication failures among clinicians in the ICU (intensive care unit) often lead to worse patient outcomes. CritCom is a bilingual (English and Spanish) tool to evaluate the quality of interdisciplinary communication around patient deterioration for pediatric oncology patients. The use of reports, such as the CritCom report, as dissemination methods lead to quicker knowledge translation and implementation of research findings into policy. Nurses and physicians at participating centers who care for patients at risk of deterioration completed the CritCom survey and center-specific reports were generated to communicate CritCom results. Focus groups were conducted with clinicians receiving CritCom reports in both English and Spanish to evaluate report clarity and usability. Participants found the reports to be useful and described the writing and design as clear and specific. Participants provided feedback to improve report design and requested actionable steps to improve communication at their center. Feedback illustrated that the report was easy to interpret and a useful way to disseminate information. Participants noted the utility of the report, illustrating that the use of reports can be a useful method to disseminate research findings back to participants in a way that is applicable to the local context. Communicating research findings through reports can minimize the significant time lag in knowledge translation and provide participants with actionable steps to implement in their setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growth of dual-language programs in the United States, few studies have examined how children acquire Spanish through immersion. This article compares how heritage speakers (HS) and English-fluent Spanish L2 learners(L2L) immersed in Spanish comprehend gender in direct object clitics, an area of Spanish grammar prone to bilingual effects. A total of 78 English-dominant children enrolled in a dual language school participated in the experiment: 24 HS (6 in 2nd grade, 10 in 4th/5th grade, 8 in 7th/8th grade) and 54 L2L (16 in 2nd grade, 20 in 4th/5th grade, 18 in 7th/8th grade). Participants completed a forced-choice task which tested their ability to select target-like clitic gender after hearing sentences such as 'La niña está tocando la guitarra (feminine). ¿Qué hace?' The girl is playing the guitar (feminine). What does she do? * 'Lo toca' (masculine singular clitic)/'La toca' (feminine singular clitic) She plays it. Results did not reveal any significant differences at the p < 0.05 level between the HS and L2L groups with accuracy in clitic gender. We found that in receptive knowledge of masculine clitic gender, the HS and L2L children had very similar scores in the 2nd grade and showed a similar improvement in accuracy by the 7th/8th grades. However, we did not find a similar pattern of growth in children's ability to select target-like feminine gender in either group. We discuss our findings and propose possible implications for immersion programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Exposure to maternal speech during the prenatal period shapes speech perception and linguistic preferences, allowing neonates to recognize stories heard frequently in utero and demonstrating an enhanced preference for their mother's voice and native language. Yet, with a high prevalence of bilingualism worldwide, it remains an open question whether monolingual or bilingual maternal speech during pregnancy influence differently the fetus' neural mechanisms underlying speech sound encoding. Methods: In the present study, the frequency-following response (FFR), an auditory evoked potential that reflects the complex spectrotemporal dynamics of speech sounds, was recorded to a two-vowel /oa/ stimulus in a sample of 129 healthy term neonates within 1 to 3 days after birth. Newborns were divided into two groups according to maternal language usage during the last trimester of gestation (monolingual; bilingual). Spectral amplitudes and spectral signal- to-noise ratios (SNR) at the stimulus fundamental (F0) and first formant (F1) frequencies of each vowel were, respectively, taken as measures of pitch and formant structure neural encoding. Results: Our results reveal that while spectral amplitudes at F0 did not differ between groups, neonates from bilingual mothers exhibited a lower spectral SNR. Additionally, monolingually exposed neonates exhibited a higher spectral amplitude and SNR at F1 frequencies. Discussion: We interpret our results under the consideration that bilingual maternal speech, as compared to monolingual, is characterized by a greater complexity in the speech sound signal, rendering newborns from bilingual mothers more sensitive to a wider range of speech frequencies without generating a particularly strong response at any of them. Our results contribute to an expanding body of research indicating the influence of prenatal experiences on language acquisition and underscore the necessity of including prenatal language exposure in developmental studies on language acquisition, a variable often overlooked yet capable of influencing research outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: This paper provides an initial exploration of Ukrainian–Russian bilingualism in the context of the war-affected migration from Ukraine to Austria and Germany. While extensive research exists on various aspects of Ukrainian– Russian bilingualism in relation to Ukraine itself, thus far no studies have been conducted on this bilingualism in the diasporic context, i.e., as a language of the first and subsequential generations with a migrant background in Austria and Germany. Methods: To address this research gap, our paper examines the language attitudes of two respondent groups with a Ukrainian background in the two countries: migrants and refugees who left Ukraine after 2014 and those who left after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. In the framework of a sociolinguistic survey, we describe their current attitudes regarding the use of Ukrainian and Russian, among others, in relation to the actual and intended use of the language(s) in the multilingual context of migration. The survey eliciting information on demographic information, language proficiency, language attitudes and language use was conducted on 406 Ukrainians in two host countries (Austria: n = 103; Germany: n = 306). First, we compared self-rated proficiency in Ukrainian and Russian as well as attitudes and use of these languages. Second, we applied a network modelling analysis to determine the nature of relationships between these variables. Results and discussion: The results indicated that proficiency in Ukrainian and in Russian were the strongest nodes in the model affecting language use and language attitudes toward the respective languages. Our data analysis focused on the pragmatic and symbolic value of Russian and Ukrainian playing a crucial role in the language vitality in multilingual settings. The paper discusses the imbalanced correlation of the symbolic and pragmatic value of Ukrainian and Russian in the diasporic Ukrainian communities. While Ukrainian has gained a higher symbolic status, Russian maintains a better pragmatic one, despite its negative symbolic status. However, we anticipate that the increasing symbolic value of Ukrainian and the diminishing value of Russian will lead to an increase in the use of Ukrainian also in Russian-dominant bilingual groups of Ukrainian migrants and refugees, even as an insider-code in hermetic minority groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated how heritage Spanish-English bilinguals integrate their cue hierarchies to process simple sentences in both Spanish and English. Sentence interpretation is achieved by weighing the various cues that are present in the sentence against that language's cue hierarchy. The Unified Competition Model (UCM) suggests that bilinguals show a variety of patterns in sentence interpretation strategies depending on language proficiency. Previous research on heritage Spanish-English bilinguals and late bilinguals has demonstrated differences in cue utilization and sentence interpretation compared to monolinguals. However, good-enough processing suggests that when a sentence does not meet certain heuristics, like the first-noun agent heuristic, a semantic representation of the sentence will be processed instead of a syntactic one. Even with reliable sentential-level cues such as word order, a plausible semantic representation of the sentence is favored. This is especially the case with inanimate-inanimate (IA-IA) sentences, like in the present study, in which there is less reversibility of thematic roles without competing with semantic plausibility. For this study, participants (n = 32) read a total of 80 inanimate sentences in English and Spanish with subject-verb-object and object-verb-subject (OVS) word orders, indicated the subject of the sentences, and completed language proficiency and dominance tasks. When reading Spanish sentences, participants read the OVS word order faster. English proficiency was a significant predictor of sentence reading time and choice selection time but did not predict word choice. The results suggest that IA-IA sentences pose challenges for cue utilization and thematic role assignment due to semantic limitations. This study found that participantsmay prioritize semantic plausibility over syntactic representations in sentence processing, supporting a good-enough processing model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While previous research shows that bilinguals' ability to mix and switch between two separate languages is influenced by both cross-language similarity and language use contexts, little attention has been paid to bidialectal populations. Given the linguistic and sociolinguistic differences between bilingualism and bidialectalism, it is thus unclear to what extent mechanisms underlying bidialectal variety switching resemble those underlying bilinguals. To investigate the effects of cross-variety phonological distance and variety use contexts on variety switching, we tested two groups of Chinese speakers in a bidialectal auditory word recognition task. Both groups speak a regional dialect (Chengdu Mandarin or Cantonese) as their native language and are also highly proficient in Standard Mandarin. Participants' language background and linguistic experience are collected by a language background questionnaire. Mixing and switching between two varieties are costly for bidialectal speakers in comprehension. Mixing costs can be attributed to variety switches instead of the mere presence of a mixed-variety context. While variety switch and mixing costs are not influenced by cross-variety phonological distance, they are modulated by variety dominance and habitual variety use contexts. This study highlights the similarities between bidialectals and bilinguals in language processing, as well as the significance of recognizing between- and within-group differences in conducting psycholinguistics research with multilingual populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To comprehend speech, listeners must resolve competition between potential candidate words. In second-language (L2) listening such competition may be inflated by spurious activation; the onsets of “reggae” and “legacy” may both activate “leg” for Japanese listeners, or the rhymes of “adapt” and “adept” may activate “apt” for Dutch listeners, while only one in each pair triggers competition for L1 listeners. Using eyetracking with L2-dominant bilingual emigrants, we directly compared within-language L1 and L2 lexical activation and competition in the same individuals. For these listeners, activation patterns did not differ across languages. Unexpectedly, however, we observed onset competition in both languages but rhyme competition in the L2 only (although the same stimuli elicited rhyme competition for control listeners in both languages). This suggests that L1 rhyme competition may disappear after long-time immersion in an L2 environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bilinguals make decisions differently across languages likely due to reduced affect in the foreign language, but very little is known about language use in relation to deception. Here, we tested whether late Chinese-English bilinguals prefer to lie in the foreign language when betting against a virtual opponent. In each trial, participants freely announced bets in Chinese or English depending on whether they had drawn a coin or not. Results showed that bilinguals preferred using their native language, Chinese, over their foreign language, English, when being truthful-namely, announcing a coin when they had one. Even though participants did not choose English more to lie than to tell the truth, our results can be interpreted as a tendency to lie more in English when their behavior in the truth condition is considered the baseline. Participants also switched between languages more often after telling the truth than lying, and after telling the truth they switched more to Chinese. These results provide the first empirical evidence for strategic language use in bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: In heritage bilingualism studies, code-switching has often been overlooked, with a focus on either the heritage language or the dominant societal language of the bilingual individual. However, exploring code-switching can provide valuable insights into heritage speakers' grammar, revealing patterns that may not be apparent when only examining monolingual speech. Recent research suggests that in code-switched clauses, functional elements must align with the language of verbal inflection (INFL), which encompasses tense, aspect, voice, and agreement. This generalization is usually referred to as the Matrix Language Frame (MLF). The present study explores the empirical validity of this generalization using an experimental protocol that controls for variables that earlier work did not take into consideration. These variables are (a) adjacency between INFL and the functional element, (b) the interaction of the MLF with embedded islands, and (c) the possibly degrading effects of inserting a functional category. Thus, the aim of this study is to provide evidence in support (or not) of the INFL constraint beyond the experimental limitations in earlier work. The study focuses on the bilingual combination Papiamento-Dutch. Our results, by and large, support the MLF generalization. Methods: We carried out an online audio survey (3-point Likert scale) with 43 Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals. We manipulated the position of the switch and controlled for potential directionality effects by presenting code-switches in both switching directions. Results: We find a scale of acceptability, where the conditions that respect the INFL constraint are preferred. Additionally, and consistent with recent corpus and experimental literature, our results point to a clear asymmetry regarding directionality effects or choice of ML, reflecting how code-switching is deployed in the community. Discussion: Controlling for directionality allows us to discern the mechanisms of the INFL constraint. Thus, these findings underscore the intertwining influence of linguistic factors and community norms in guiding code-switching dynamics. Such insights extend beyond the specific context to shed light on broader dynamics within (heritage-language) bilingualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This collection of articles explores the use of virtual reality (VR) technology in assessing and improving cognitive function, specifically executive functions. The articles cover a variety of topics, including the assessment of attention profiles in children with brain injuries, cognitive training for older adults using VR-based exergaming, and the development of virtual environments for assessing everyday cognitive function. The articles also discuss the use of EEG and other neuroimaging techniques in combination with VR for measuring cognitive load and identifying psychiatric disorders. These articles offer valuable insights into the potential advantages of VR in cognitive assessment and rehabilitation. [Extracted from the article]

Introduction: In bilingual communities, knowing the language each speaker uses may support language separation and, later, guide language use in a context-appropriate manner. Previous research has shown that infants begin to form primary associations between the face and the language used by a speaker around the age of 3 months. However, there is still a limited understanding of how robust these associations are and whether they are influenced by the linguistic background of the infant. To answer these questions, this study explores monolingual and bilingual infants' ability to form face-language associations throughout the first year of life. Methods: A group of 4-, 6-, and 10-month-old Spanish and/or Catalan monolingual and bilingual infants were tested in an eye-tracking preferentiallooking paradigm (N = 156). After the infants were familiarized with videos of a Catalan and a Spanish speaker, they were tested in two types of test trials with different task demands. First, a Silent test trial assessed primary face-language associations by measuring infants' visual preference for the speakers based on the language they had previously used. Then, two Language test trials assessed more robust face-language associations by measuring infants' ability to match the face of each speaker with their corresponding language. Results: When measuring primary face-language associations, both monolingual and bilingual infants exhibited language-based preferences according to their specific exposure to the languages. Interestingly, this preference varied with age, with a transition from an initial familiarity preference to a novelty preference in older infants. Four-month-old infants showed a preference for the speaker who used their native/dominant language, while 10-month-old infants preferred the speaker who used their non-native/non-dominant language. When measuring more robust face-language associations, infants did not demonstrate signs of consistently matching the faces of the speakers with the language they had previously used, regardless of age or linguistic background. Discussion: Overall, the results indicate that while both monolingual and bilingual infants before the first year of life can form primary face-language associations, these associations remain fragile as infants seemed unable to maintain them when tested in a more demanding task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: It has been argued that certain words can "trigger" intrasentential code-switching. While some researchers suggest that cognates establish triggering at the lexical level, others have argued that words that lack direct translations are more natural stories switch. Yet to be tested experimentally is to what extent different types of lexical items influence the acceptability of mixed utterances. Methods: The current study investigates this methodological consideration for code-switching research by having early US Spanish-English bilinguals (i.e., heritage speakers of Spanish) complete an acceptability judgment task with a 7-point Likert scale directly comparing cognates (e.g., sopa "soup") and culturally specific items (e.g., pozole "traditional Mexican soup") in otherwise identical grammatical switched sentences (N = 24). Results: The results showed that there was no significant effect of condition (p = 0.623) suggesting that cognates and language-specific items are equally acceptable in code-switched sentences. Indeed all conditions were rated on average above 6. Discussion: These findings show that in this context, judgment tasks are not affected differently by these types of lexical items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides a summary of a research topic on heritage language (HL) acquisition, processing, and maintenance. The studies included in the research topic explore various aspects of HL bilingualism, including cross-cultural and cross-linguistic differences in speech act pragmatics, syntactic processing, and grammatical gender knowledge. The studies utilize different methodologies such as self-paced reading tasks, eye-tracking, and EEG/ERP to investigate linguistic processing in HL speakers. The findings highlight the complexity and richness of HL bilingualism and emphasize the importance of considering linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural factors in understanding HL acquisition. The research topic serves as a foundation for future research and pedagogical innovations in the field of HL bilingualism. [Extracted from the article]

Filler particles like uhm in English or ähm in German show subtle language-specific differences and their variation in form is related to socio-linguistic variables like gender. The use of fillers in a second language has been shown to differ from monolinguals' filler particle use in both frequency and form in different language contexts. This study investigates the language-specific use of filler particles by bilingual heritage speakers in both their languages, looking at the dominant majority language in the society and their minority heritage language spoken at home. This is done based on heritage Russian and German data and majority German and English data from the RUEG corpus. Language-specific fillers were extracted from the corpus and analyzed for their occurrence and segmental form. The frequency analysis suggests an influence of bilingualism, age group, and formality of the situation on the filler frequency across all languages. The number of filler particles is higher in formal, older, and bilingual speech. The form analysis reveals an effect of language and gender on the type of filler particle. The vocalic-nasal filler particles (e.g., uhm) are more frequently found in German and English and in female speech of these languages. Heritage speakers of Russian in contact with German and English show higher use of vocalic-nasal forms also in their Russian while producing similar gender related patterns to monolingual speakers in both their languages. The higher frequency of filler particles in formal situations, older speakers and in bilingual speech, is discussed related to cognitive load which is assumed to be higher in these contexts while speech style which differs between situations and social groups is also considered as explanation. The higher use of vocalic-nasal filler particles in German and English suggests language specific filler particle preferences also related to the socio-linguistic variable gender in these languages. The results from heritage speakers suggest and influence on filler particle form in their heritage language, while also revealing socio-linguistic usage patterns related to gender which are produced by heritage speakers similarly to monolinguals in their respective language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionResearch to date has focused on the associations between spelling and (i) its precursors (phonological information processing and language) and (ii) socioeconomic status and bilingualism. Studies have also indicated that bilingualism and parental education are associated with spelling precursors. Whereas these associations have previously been analyzed individually, this study proposes a mediation model in which the effects of socioeconomic status and bilingualism on spelling are mediated by phonological information processing and language skills.MethodsA total of 1,012 German-speaking first graders attending primary schools in Austria were assessed at the beginning of the first grade on their phonological information processing and language abilities, and their spelling abilities were tested again at the end of the first grade. Subsequently, a structural equation modeling approach was employed to evaluate the mediation model.ResultsIn line with the mediation hypothesis, the results show indirect effects of parental education (as a measure of socioeconomic status) on spelling via language and phonological information processing. In addition to mediation, we also found a direct effect of SES on spelling performances. For bilingualism, the results support full mediation as an indirect effect via language abilities. Notably, we found no effect of bilingual status on phonological information processing.DiscussionThis study highlights the ongoing need for systematic oral language training for bilingual children and children from low-SES backgrounds that starts in preschool and continues throughout primary school. Moreover, given the predictive effect of phonological awareness on spelling achievement, phonological awareness should be part of the training for preschool and school-aged children.

A wide range of tools have been used to assess the language proficiency of bilingual speakers. The validity and high reliability of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity measures as instruments for measuring language proficiency have been demonstrated in previous studies across different languages. However, the relationship between self-assessment and the two measures has not yet been investigated. The present study focused on the Italophone bilingual language speakers, an understudied minority diglossic community in Croatia, and investigated whether measures of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity reflect self-assessment of language proficiency in the standard Italian language and the Istrovenetian dialect overall and in four specific domains (reading, writing, speaking, and listening). In addition, we aimed to investigate whether there are possible differences in self-assessment between the standard Italian language and the Istrovenetian dialect and whether there are language variety-related differences (standard vs. dialect) in the relationship between self-assessment and measures of lexical diversity and syntactic complexity. The results showed an intricate interplay between self-assessment and the lexical diversity and syntactic complexity of bilingual speech. This suggests that these measures are interrelated and that heritage bilingual language speakers may be able to objectively assess their language proficiency.

This paper is an investigation of reference production in 84 Italian-Spanish bilingual children aged 8 to 12. The study explores whether such reference production is influenced by either the type of referential expression involved or language dominance by analyzing how these children manage reference. The children’s relative proficiency in the two languages (and thus their language dominance) was assessed through a cloze-test, and their narrative production was evaluated using a retelling task. Results indicated a preference for null pronouns to refer to subjects and full referential expressions for objects, with Italian showing a higher occurrence of full referential expressions. Dominance in either language did not significantly impact reference production. This suggests that bilingual children can distinguish between language-specific patterns, a behavior consistent with adult monolingual groups. These results contribute to our understanding of bilingual reference management and shed light on the role played by language and language dominance.

According to the Critical Period Hypothesis, successful language learning is optimal during early childhood, whereas language learning outside of this time window is unsuccessful. In this respect, early language acquisition is viewed as convergent and reliable but late acquisition is not. The present study revisits the idea of a critical period by investigating the grammatical attainment of early bilinguals/heritage speakers (HSs), late second/foreign language (L2) learners, and comparable groups of monolinguals by testing Greek-English bilinguals in the two languages they speak by means of a grammaticality judgment task. Our findings show that in English, HSs performed on par with monolinguals, both groups surpassing the late L2 learners, who performed about 2 SDs below the HSs and the monolinguals. In Greek, late L2 learners and monolinguals exhibited comparable performance, contrasting sharply with the HSs’ significantly lower proficiency, which was on average about 5 SDs below the late L2 learners and the monolinguals. Consequently, our results show that the performance gaps between HSs and Greek monolinguals/late L2 learners were more pronounced than the differences between late L2 learners and English monolinguals/HSs, suggesting that the early bilinguals’ success in English may come at the expense of their heritage language (Greek). Furthermore, we observe substantially more individual variation within HSs in their heritage language than within the late L2 learners for their second language. Thus, testing bilinguals in both of their languages allows us to unveil the complexity of grammatical ultimate attainment and prompt a re-thinking of age as the major determining factor of (un)successful attainment.

Currently available data show mixed results as to whether the processing of emotional information has the same characteristics in the native (L1) as in the second language (L2) of bilinguals. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment to shed light on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying bilinguals’ emotional processing in L1 and L2 during an emotional interference task (i.e., the Emotional Stroop Task – EST). Our sample comprised proficient Italian-English bilinguals who learned their L2 during childhood mainly in instructional rather than immersive contexts. In spite of no detectable behavioural effects, we found stronger brain activations for L1 versus L2 emotional words in sectors of the posteromedial cortex involved in attention modulation, episodic memory, and affective processing. While fMRI findings are consistent with the hypothesis of a stronger emotional resonance when processing words in a native language, our overall pattern of results points to the different sensitivity of behavioural and hemodynamic responses to emotional information in the two languages of bilingual speakers.

This study examined grammatical gender processing in school-aged children with varying levels of cumulative English exposure. Children participated in a visual world paradigm with a four-picture display where they heard a gendered article followed by a target noun and were in the context where all images were the same gender (same gender), where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender than the target noun (different gender), and where all of the distractor images were the opposite gender, but there was a mismatch in the gendered article and target noun pair. We investigated 51 children (aged 5;0–10;0) who were exposed to Spanish since infancy but varied in their amount of cumulative English exposure. In addition to the visual word paradigm, all children completed an article–noun naming task, a grammaticality judgment task, and standardized vocabulary tests. Parents reported on their child’s cumulative English language exposure and current English language use. To investigate the time course of lexical facilitation effects, looks to the target were analyzed with a cluster-based permutation test. The results revealed that all children used gender in a facilitatory way (during the noun region), and comprehension was significantly inhibited when the article–noun pairing was ungrammatical rather than grammatical. Compared to children with less cumulative English exposure, children with more cumulative English exposure looked at the target noun significantly less often overall, and compared to younger children, older children looked at the target noun significantly more often overall. Additionally, children with lower cumulative English exposure looked at target nouns more in the different-gender condition than the same-gender condition for masculine items more than feminine items.

IntroductionThis paper studies the pragmatic force that heritage speakers may convey through the use of the diminutive in everyday speech. In particular, I analyze the use of the Spanish diminutive in 49 sociolinguistic interviews from a Spanish–English bilingual community in Southern Arizona, U.S. where Spanish is the heritage language. I compare the use of the diminutive in heritage Spanish to the distribution of the diminutive in the speech of a Spanish monolingual community (18 sociolinguistic interviews) from the same dialectal region. Although Spanish and English employ different morphosyntactic strategies to express diminutive meaning, the analysis reveals that the diminutive morpheme -ito/a is a productive morphological device in the Spanish-discourse of heritage speakers from Southern Arizona (i.e., similar diminutive distributions to their monolingual counterparts). While heritage speakers employed the diminutive -ito/a to express the notion of “smallness” in their Spanish-discourse, the analysis indicates that these language users are more likely to invoke a subjective evaluation through the diminutive -ito/a when talking about their family members and/or childhood experiences. This particular finding suggests that the concept “child” is the semantic/pragmatic driving force of the diminutive in heritage Spanish as a marker of speech by, about, to, or with some relation to children. The analysis further suggests that examining the pragmatic dimensions of the diminutive in everyday speech can provide important insights into how heritage speakers encode and create cultural meaning in their heritage languages.MethodsIn this study, I analyze the use of Spanish diminutives in two U.S.-Mexico border regions. The first data set is representative of a Spanish–English bilingual community in Southern Arizona, U.S., provided in the Corpus del Español en el Sur de Arizona (The CESA Corpus). The CESA Corpus comprises 49 sociolinguistic interviews of ~1 h each for a total of ~305,542 words. The second data set comprises 18 sociolinguistic interviews of predominantly monolingual Spanish speakers from the city of Mexicali, Baja California in Mexico, provided in the Proyecto Para el Estudio Sociolingüístico del Español de España y de América (PRESEEA). The Mexicali data set consists of ~119,162 words.ResultsThe analysis revealed that the Spanish diminutive morpheme -ito/a is a productive morphological device in the Spanish-discourse of heritage speakers from Southern Arizona. In addition to its prototypical meaning (i.e., the notion of “smallness”), the diminutive morpheme -ito/a conveyed an array of pragmatic functions in the everyday speech of Spanish heritage speakers and their monolingual counterparts from the same dialectal region. Importantly, these pragmatic functions are mediated by speakers' subjective perceptions of the entity in question. Unlike their monolingual counterparts, heritage speakers are more likely to invoke a subjective evaluation through the diminutive -ito/a when talking about their family members and/or childhood experiences. Altogether, the study suggests that the concept “child” is the semantic/pragmatic driving force of the diminutive in heritage Spanish as a marker of speech by, about, to, or with some relation to children.DiscussionIn this study, I followed Reynoso's framework to study the pragmatic dimensions of the diminutive in everyday speech, that is, speakers' publicly conveyed meaning. The analysis revealed that heritage speakers applied most of the pragmatic functions and their respective values observed in Reynoso's cross-dialectal study of Spanish diminutives, and hence providing further support for her framework. Similarly, the study provides further evidence to Jurafsky's proposal that morphological diminutives arise from semantic or pragmatic links with children. Finally, the analysis indicated that examining the semantic/pragmatic dimensions of the diminutive in everyday speech can provide important insights into how heritage speakers encode and create cultural meaning in their heritage languages, which can in turn have further ramifications for heritage language learning and teaching.

Introduction: A substantial amount of research from the last two decades suggests that infants' attention to the eyes and mouth regions of talking faces could be a supporting mechanism by which they acquire their native(s) language(s). Importantly, attentional strategies seem to be sensitive to three types of constraints: the properties of the stimulus, the infants' attentional control skills (which improve with age and brain maturation) and their previous linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge. The goal of the present paper is to present a probabilistic model to simulate infants' visual attention control to talking faces as a function of their language learning environment (monolingual vs. bilingual), attention maturation (i.e., age) and their increasing knowledge concerning the task at stake (detecting and learning to anticipate information displayed in the eyes or the mouth region of the speaker). Methods: To test the model, we first considered experimental eye-tracking data from monolingual and bilingual infants (aged between 12 and 18 months; in part already published) exploring a face speaking in their native language. In each of these conditions, we compared the proportion of total looking time on each of the two areas of interest (eyes vs. mouth of the speaker). Results: In line with previous studies, our experimental results show a strong bias for the mouth (over the eyes) region of the speaker, regardless of age. Furthermore, monolingual and bilingual infants appear to have different developmental trajectories, which is consistent with and extends previous results observed in the first year. Comparison of model simulations with experimental data shows that the model successfully captures patterns of visuo-attentional orientation through the three parameters that effectively modulate the simulated visuo-attentional behavior. Discussion: We interpret parameter values, and find that they adequately reflect evolution of strength and speed of anticipatory learning; we further discuss their descriptive and explanatory power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines online processing and offline judgments of subject-verb person agreement with a focus on how this is impacted by markedness in heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian. To this end, 54 adult HSs living in Germany and 40 homeland Italian speakers completed a self-paced reading task (SPRT) and a grammaticality judgment task (GJT). Markedness was manipulated by probing agreement with both first-person (marked) and third-person (unmarked) subjects. Agreement was manipulated by crossing first-person marked subjects with third-person unmarked verbs and vice versa. Crucially, person violations with 1st person subjects (e.g., io *suona la chitarra “I plays-3rd-person the guitar”) yielded significantly shorter RTs in the SPRT and higher accuracy in the GJT than the opposite error type (e.g., il giornalista *esco spesso “the journalist go-1st-person out often”). This effect is consistent with the claim that when the first element in the dependency is marked (first person), the parser generates stronger predictions regarding upcoming agreeing elements. These results nicely align with work from the same populations investigating the impact of morphological markedness on grammatical gender agreement, suggesting that markedness impacts agreement similarly in two distinct grammatical domains and that sensitivity to markedness is more prevalent for HSs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the importance of affirming culture and cultural identity in bilingual/ESL classrooms, particularly in Texas and the United States. It emphasizes the need for bilingual and ESL programs to address the needs of English learners and highlights the significance of incorporating students' cultural backgrounds in their education. The article provides strategies for teaching culture in the classroom and supporting families in their language use. It also discusses the importance of providing additional support to parents and students during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for young English learners, and suggests evidence-based strategies for educators to mitigate learning losses. The article promotes a culturally responsive approach to bilingual/ESL education, emphasizing the integration of culture and language to support students' development and sense of self-worth. [Extracted from the article]

There is growing research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that examines linguistically diverse samples, increasing research generalizability as many individuals with ASD live in bilingual or multilingual communities. However, bilingualism is not a homogenous experience that can be easily categorized. By clarifying participants' language experiences, research findings can be more meaningful for clinicians and practitioners. In this systematic review, we document how the language experiences of samples with and without ASD were described in 103 peer-reviewed journal articles. We observed that language experiences were characterized using a wide range of labels and descriptions. Approximately half of the studies in this review reported participants' language acquisition history, and 64% of the studies defined language proficiency using standardized measures or parental reports. However, <20% of the studies reported daily language exposure and/or usage of the participants. The diversity in how participants' language experiences were characterized in research reflects the complexity of bilingualism. Yet, to further understand how ASD and bilingualism intersect across studies, to facilitate meta-science development, and to balance generalizability with specificity, reporting common characteristics of bilingual experiences is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demands for effective assessments of speech perception specific to the aging brain are increasing, as the impacts of hearing loss on an individual's functional health, socialization, and cognition have become more widely recognized. Understanding the mechanisms behind the optimal function of the aging brain in relation to speech and language is challenging, especially in the bilingual population where the language learning and language interference processes could be mistaken for perceptual difficulty. Age-related presbycusis is unavoidable, and the contributions of this sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) process on impaired speech recognition are not completely understood. This lack of understanding of the effects of aging and bilingual language competency on speech perception can act as a barrier to successful auditory rehabilitation. The present study investigated the effects of aging on vowel sound discrimination in adult listeners (age 50+) with the following characteristics: American English (AE) monolinguals with normal hearing, simultaneous or early sequential Spanish- English (SE) bilinguals with normal hearing, and AE monolinguals with SNHL (AESNHL). The goal was to identify the differences in vowel sound discrimination performance between the monolingual and bilingual aging populations to guide future language assessments and intervention processes. English vowel discrimination was assessed using an AXB discrimination task in quiet and using the Quick Speech in Noise (QuickSIN) test. SE bilinguals were outperformed by AE and AE-SNHL monolinguals, suggesting SE bilinguals primarily use their L1 acoustic properties to discriminate speech segments. No significant difference was found in QuickSIN performance between the bilingual and the monolingual groups, but there was a significant difference between AE and AE-SNHL. In conclusion, vowel discrimination was affected by interference with the native language, while performance in the noise condition was affected by hearing loss. The results of this study contribute to our understanding of the age-related speech processing deficits from three different aging groups regarding the cognitive control system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionThis paper provides an initial exploration of Ukrainian–Russian bilingualism in the context of the war-affected migration from Ukraine to Austria and Germany. While extensive research exists on various aspects of Ukrainian– Russian bilingualism in relation to Ukraine itself, thus far no studies have been conducted on this bilingualism in the diasporic context, i.e., as a language of the first and subsequential generations with a migrant background in Austria and Germany.MethodsTo address this research gap, our paper examines the language attitudes of two respondent groups with a Ukrainian background in the two countries: migrants and refugees who left Ukraine after 2014 and those who left after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. In the framework of a sociolinguistic survey, we describe their current attitudes regarding the use of Ukrainian and Russian, among others, in relation to the actual and intended use of the language(s) in the multilingual context of migration. The survey eliciting information on demographic information, language proficiency, language attitudes and language use was conducted on 406 Ukrainians in two host countries (Austria: n = 103; Germany: n = 306). First, we compared self-rated proficiency in Ukrainian and Russian as well as attitudes and use of these languages. Second, we applied a network modelling analysis to determine the nature of relationships between these variables.Results and discussionThe results indicated that proficiency in Ukrainian and in Russian were the strongest nodes in the model affecting language use and language attitudes toward the respective languages. Our data analysis focused on the pragmatic and symbolic value of Russian and Ukrainian playing a crucial role in the language vitality in multilingual settings. The paper discusses the imbalanced correlation of the symbolic and pragmatic value of Ukrainian and Russian in the diasporic Ukrainian communities. While Ukrainian has gained a higher symbolic status, Russian maintains a better pragmatic one, despite its negative symbolic status. However, we anticipate that the increasing symbolic value of Ukrainian and the diminishing value of Russian will lead to an increase in the use of Ukrainian also in Russian-dominant bilingual groups of Ukrainian migrants and refugees, even as an insider-code in hermetic minority groups.

IntroductionExposure to maternal speech during the prenatal period shapes speech perception and linguistic preferences, allowing neonates to recognize stories heard frequently in utero and demonstrating an enhanced preference for their mother’s voice and native language. Yet, with a high prevalence of bilingualism worldwide, it remains an open question whether monolingual or bilingual maternal speech during pregnancy influence differently the fetus’ neural mechanisms underlying speech sound encoding.MethodsIn the present study, the frequency-following response (FFR), an auditory evoked potential that reflects the complex spectrotemporal dynamics of speech sounds, was recorded to a two-vowel /oa/ stimulus in a sample of 129 healthy term neonates within 1 to 3 days after birth. Newborns were divided into two groups according to maternal language usage during the last trimester of gestation (monolingual; bilingual). Spectral amplitudes and spectral signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) at the stimulus fundamental (F0) and first formant (F1) frequencies of each vowel were, respectively, taken as measures of pitch and formant structure neural encoding.ResultsOur results reveal that while spectral amplitudes at F0 did not differ between groups, neonates from bilingual mothers exhibited a lower spectral SNR. Additionally, monolingually exposed neonates exhibited a higher spectral amplitude and SNR at F1 frequencies.DiscussionWe interpret our results under the consideration that bilingual maternal speech, as compared to monolingual, is characterized by a greater complexity in the speech sound signal, rendering newborns from bilingual mothers more sensitive to a wider range of speech frequencies without generating a particularly strong response at any of them. Our results contribute to an expanding body of research indicating the influence of prenatal experiences on language acquisition and underscore the necessity of including prenatal language exposure in developmental studies on language acquisition, a variable often overlooked yet capable of influencing research outcomes.

IntroductionIn bilingual communities, knowing the language each speaker uses may support language separation and, later, guide language use in a context-appropriate manner. Previous research has shown that infants begin to form primary associations between the face and the language used by a speaker around the age of 3 months. However, there is still a limited understanding of how robust these associations are and whether they are influenced by the linguistic background of the infant. To answer these questions, this study explores monolingual and bilingual infants’ ability to form face-language associations throughout the first year of life.MethodsA group of 4-, 6-, and 10-month-old Spanish and/or Catalan monolingual and bilingual infants were tested in an eye-tracking preferential-looking paradigm (N = 156). After the infants were familiarized with videos of a Catalan and a Spanish speaker, they were tested in two types of test trials with different task demands. First, a Silent test trial assessed primary face-language associations by measuring infants’ visual preference for the speakers based on the language they had previously used. Then, two Language test trials assessed more robust face-language associations by measuring infants’ ability to match the face of each speaker with their corresponding language.ResultsWhen measuring primary face-language associations, both monolingual and bilingual infants exhibited language-based preferences according to their specific exposure to the languages. Interestingly, this preference varied with age, with a transition from an initial familiarity preference to a novelty preference in older infants. Four-month-old infants showed a preference for the speaker who used their native/dominant language, while 10-month-old infants preferred the speaker who used their non-native/non-dominant language. When measuring more robust face-language associations, infants did not demonstrate signs of consistently matching the faces of the speakers with the language they had previously used, regardless of age or linguistic background.DiscussionOverall, the results indicate that while both monolingual and bilingual infants before the first year of life can form primary face-language associations, these associations remain fragile as infants seemed unable to maintain them when tested in a more demanding task.

Introduction: This study investigates the heritage language performance of Turkish- German returnees upon their reintegration into Turkey and explores the impact of external factors on their proficiency in the (re-)activated heritage language (HL). Methods: Data collection involved the participation of 28 Turkish heritage speakers and a control group of 28 monolingual speakers. The language proficiency of both groups was assessed through a cloze test and an error correction task with a focus on converbial constructions, evidentiality and direct object case marking in Turkish. A sociolinguistic background questionnaire was used to obtain information about their language experiences. The study focused on understanding the individual and group differences in returnee's heritage language performance. Additionally, random forest analysis was employed to investigate the relative influence of external factors on individual variability within the returnee group. Results and Discussion: The analysis of results revealed notable group differences between the returnees and the control group, emphasizing the unique linguistic challenges faced by those who returned to Turkey. Within the returnee group, there was considerable individual variability in heritage language performance. The subsequent exploration of individual variation highlighted the significant role of external factors. Notably, the length of residence in Germany, the age at which participants returned to Turkey, and the frequency of Turkish language use in their migration context emerged as significant predictors of the returnee participants' proficiency in their (re-)activated HL. Surprisingly, formal contact with the dominant German language did not exert a substantial impact on the returnees' language proficiency, suggesting the nuanced influence of various external factors on heritage language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Early linguistic background, and in particular, access to language, lays the foundation of future reading skills in deaf and hard-of-hearing signers. The current study aims to estimate the impact of two factors - early access to sign and/or spoken language - on reading fluency in deaf and hard-of-hearing adult Russian Sign Language speakers. Methods: In the eye-tracking experiment, 26 deaf and 14 hard-of-hearing native Russian Sign Language speakers read 144 sentences from the Russian Sentence Corpus. Analysis of global eye-movement trajectories (scanpaths) was used to identify clusters of typical reading trajectories. The role of early access to sign and spoken language as well as vocabulary size as predictors of the more fluent reading pattern was tested. Results: Hard-of-hearing signers with early access to sign language read more fluently than those who were exposed to sign language later in life or deaf signers without access to speech sounds. No association between early access to spoken language and reading fluency was found. Discussion: Our results suggest a unique advantage for the hard-of-hearing individuals from having early access to both sign and spoken language and support the existing claims that early exposure to sign language is beneficial not only for deaf but also for hard-of-hearing children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionIt has been argued that certain words can “trigger” intrasentential code-switching. While some researchers suggest that cognates establish triggering at the lexical level, others have argued that words that lack direct translations are more natural stories switch. Yet to be tested experimentally is to what extent different types of lexical items influence the acceptability of mixed utterances.MethodsThe current study investigates this methodological consideration for code-switching research by having early US Spanish-English bilinguals (i.e., heritage speakers of Spanish) complete an acceptability judgment task with a 7-point Likert scale directly comparing cognates (e.g., sopa “soup”) and culturally specific items (e.g., pozole “traditional Mexican soup”) in otherwise identical grammatical switched sentences (N = 24).ResultsThe results showed that there was no significant effect of condition (p = 0.623) suggesting that cognates and language-specific items are equally acceptable in code-switched sentences. Indeed all conditions were rated on average above 6.DiscussionThese findings show that in this context, judgment tasks are not affected differently by these types of lexical items.

This study examines online processing and offline judgments of subject-verb person agreement with a focus on how this is impacted by markedness in heritage speakers (HSs) of Italian. To this end, 54 adult HSs living in Germany and 40 homeland Italian speakers completed a self-paced reading task (SPRT) and a grammaticality judgment task (GJT). Markedness was manipulated by probing agreement with both first-person (marked) and third-person (unmarked) subjects. Agreement was manipulated by crossing first-person marked subjects with third-person unmarked verbs and vice versa. Crucially, person violations with 1st person subjects (e.g., io *suona la chitarra “I plays-3rd-person the guitar”) yielded significantly shorter RTs in the SPRT and higher accuracy in the GJT than the opposite error type (e.g., il giornalista *esco spesso “the journalist go-1st-person out often”). This effect is consistent with the claim that when the first element in the dependency is marked (first person), the parser generates stronger predictions regarding upcoming agreeing elements. These results nicely align with work from the same populations investigating the impact of morphological markedness on grammatical gender agreement, suggesting that markedness impacts agreement similarly in two distinct grammatical domains and that sensitivity to markedness is more prevalent for HSs.

IntroductionA substantial amount of research from the last two decades suggests that infants' attention to the eyes and mouth regions of talking faces could be a supporting mechanism by which they acquire their native(s) language(s). Importantly, attentional strategies seem to be sensitive to three types of constraints: the properties of the stimulus, the infants' attentional control skills (which improve with age and brain maturation) and their previous linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge. The goal of the present paper is to present a probabilistic model to simulate infants' visual attention control to talking faces as a function of their language learning environment (monolingual vs. bilingual), attention maturation (i.e., age) and their increasing knowledge concerning the task at stake (detecting and learning to anticipate information displayed in the eyes or the mouth region of the speaker).MethodsTo test the model, we first considered experimental eye-tracking data from monolingual and bilingual infants (aged between 12 and 18 months; in part already published) exploring a face speaking in their native language. In each of these conditions, we compared the proportion of total looking time on each of the two areas of interest (eyes vs. mouth of the speaker).ResultsIn line with previous studies, our experimental results show a strong bias for the mouth (over the eyes) region of the speaker, regardless of age. Furthermore, monolingual and bilingual infants appear to have different developmental trajectories, which is consistent with and extends previous results observed in the first year. Comparison of model simulations with experimental data shows that the model successfully captures patterns of visuo-attentional orientation through the three parameters that effectively modulate the simulated visuo-attentional behavior.DiscussionWe interpret parameter values, and find that they adequately reflect evolution of strength and speed of anticipatory learning; we further discuss their descriptive and explanatory power.

Filler particles like uhm in English or ähm in German show subtle language-specific differences and their variation in form is related to socio-linguistic variables like gender. The use of fillers in a second language has been shown to differ from monolinguals' filler particle use in both frequency and form in different language contexts. This study investigates the language-specific use of filler particles by bilingual heritage speakers in both their languages, looking at the dominant majority language in the society and their minority heritage language spoken at home. This is done based on heritage Russian and German data and majority German and English data from the RUEG corpus. Language-specific fillers were extracted from the corpus and analyzed for their occurrence and segmental form. The frequency analysis suggests an influence of bilingualism, age group, and formality of the situation on the filler frequency across all languages. The number of filler particles is higher in formal, older, and bilingual speech. The form analysis reveals an effect of language and gender on the type of filler particle. The vocalic-nasal filler particles (e.g., uhm) are more frequently found in German and English and in female speech of these languages. Heritage speakers of Russian in contact with German and English show higher use of vocalic-nasal forms also in their Russian while producing similar gender related patterns to monolingual speakers in both their languages. The higher frequency of filler particles in formal situations, older speakers and in bilingual speech, is discussed related to cognitive load which is assumed to be higher in these contexts while speech style which differs between situations and social groups is also considered as explanation. The higher use of vocalic-nasal filler particles in German and English suggests language specific filler particle preferences also related to the socio-linguistic variable gender in these languages. The results from heritage speakers suggest and influence on filler particle form in their heritage language, while also revealing socio-linguistic usage patterns related to gender which are produced by heritage speakers similarly to monolinguals in their respective language.

Studies have emphasized the significance of maintaining a heritage language for various reasons such as the establishment of linguistic and cultural identity, as well as socio-emotional development. Despite the crucial role that literacy development in a heritage language plays in language preservation, there is a scant research that explores the impact of home literacy environment and literacy development in children with a heritage language. This study aimed to examine the home literacy environment and literacy-related skills in 4-to 5-year-old Korean–English bilingual children living in an English-speaking country, Australia, whose heritage language is Korean, and to investigate the relationships among the home literacy environment factors and the child-internal literacy-related skills. The study employed parental questionnaires and video analyses of parent–child shared book reading sessions to assess the Korean and English home literacy environment. Children’s early literacy skills in Korean and English, along with their Korean, English, and conceptual vocabulary skills, were measured as literacy-related skills. The findings indicated that parents utilized an indirect approach for Korean literacy practices, in contrast to a more direct and explicit method for English literacy practices. However, active and direct literacy practices were found to be essential for Korean early literacy development, while indirect methods are sufficient for English early literacy skills. Moreover, the availability of abundant Korean literacy resources at home had a positive impact on the development of Korean and English, as well as conceptual vocabulary skills. In conclusion, this study underscores the importance of providing a robust literacy environment in a heritage language in bilingual families to promote language proficiency in both the heritage language and the dominant social language, while also supporting the development of conceptual language skills.

To comprehend speech, listeners must resolve competition between potential candidate words. In second-language (L2) listening such competition may be inflated by spurious activation; the onsets of “reggae” and “legacy” may both activate “leg” for Japanese listeners, or the rhymes of “adapt” and “adept” may activate “apt” for Dutch listeners, while only one in each pair triggers competition for L1 listeners. Using eyetracking with L2-dominant bilingual emigrants, we directly compared within-language L1 and L2 lexical activation and competition in the same individuals. For these listeners, activation patterns did not differ across languages. Unexpectedly, however, we observed onset competition in both languages but rhyme competition in the L2 only (although the same stimuli elicited rhyme competition for control listeners in both languages). This suggests that L1 rhyme competition may disappear after long-time immersion in an L2 environment.

IntroductionIn heritage bilingualism studies, code-switching has often been overlooked, with a focus on either the heritage language or the dominant societal language of the bilingual individual. However, exploring code-switching can provide valuable insights into heritage speakers' grammar, revealing patterns that may not be apparent when only examining monolingual speech. Recent research suggests that in code-switched clauses, functional elements must align with the language of verbal inflection (INFL), which encompasses tense, aspect, voice, and agreement. This generalization is usually referred to as the Matrix Language Frame (MLF). The present study explores the empirical validity of this generalization using an experimental protocol that controls for variables that earlier work did not take into consideration. These variables are (a) adjacency between INFL and the functional element, (b) the interaction of the MLF with embedded islands, and (c) the possibly degrading effects of inserting a functional category. Thus, the aim of this study is to provide evidence in support (or not) of the INFL constraint beyond the experimental limitations in earlier work. The study focuses on the bilingual combination Papiamento–Dutch. Our results, by and large, support the MLF generalization.MethodsWe carried out an online audio survey (3-point Likert scale) with 43 Papiamento–Dutch bilinguals. We manipulated the position of the switch and controlled for potential directionality effects by presenting code-switches in both switching directions.ResultsWe find a scale of acceptability, where the conditions that respect the INFL constraint are preferred. Additionally, and consistent with recent corpus and experimental literature, our results point to a clear asymmetry regarding directionality effects or choice of ML, reflecting how code-switching is deployed in the community.DiscussionControlling for directionality allows us to discern the mechanisms of the INFL constraint. Thus, these findings underscore the intertwining influence of linguistic factors and community norms in guiding code-switching dynamics. Such insights extend beyond the specific context to shed light on broader dynamics within (heritage-language) bilingualism.