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The present study examined how culture and gender influence the self-construal of mothers and their four-year-olds during dyadic reminiscing. Participants were 21 Thai (11 girls, 10 boys) and 21 American (10 girls, 11 boys) mother-child dyads. Thai dyads exhibited a more interdependent self-construal, whereas American dyads exhibited a more independent self-construal, as measured by personal and group pronoun usage and discussions of behavioral expectations, thoughts and feelings, and personal attributes. Girls and boys differed in the extent to which their self-construal was defined in relation to others in their social groups, for example girls mentioned teachers and classmates more than boys. Culture and gender also interacted in influencing self-construal, with Thai girls (but not boys) mentioning family members more than American counterparts. These findings suggest that the development of children's self-construal, particularly the extent to which children are socialized to view and express themselves independently of others or interdependently with others, differs depending on culture and gender. This work contributes to our understanding of the relationship between autobiographical memory and self during the formative years. Starting as early as preschool, our social environment influences the way we remember our experiences, which in turn shapes our self-construal.

A bilingual's language system is highly interactive. When hearing a second language (L2), bilinguals access native-language (L1) words that share sounds across languages. In the present study, we examine whether input modality and L2 proficiency moderate the extent to which bilinguals activate L1 phonotactic constraints (i.e., rules for combining speech sounds) during L2 processing. Eye movements of English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals were tracked as they searched for a target English word in a visual display. On critical trials, displays included a target that conflicted with the Spanish vowel-onset rule (e.g., "spa"), as well as a competitor containing the potentially activated "e" onset (e.g., "egg"). The rule violation was processed either in the visual modality (Experiment 1) or audio-visually (Experiment 2). In both experiments, bilinguals with lower L2 proficiency made more eye movements to competitors than fillers. Findings suggest that bilinguals who have lower L2 proficiency access L1 phonotactic constraints during L2 visual word processing with and without auditory input of the constraint-conflicting structure (e.g., "spa"). We conclude that the interactivity between a bilingual's two languages is not limited to words that share form across languages, but also extends to sublexical, rule-based structures.

Maternal scaffolding and four-year-old children's linguistic skills were examined during toy play. Participants were 21 American-English monolingual and 21 Thai monolingual mother-child dyads. Results revealed cross-cultural differences in conversation styles between the two groups. American dyads adopted a high-elaborative style relative to Thai dyads. American and Thai mothers utilized unique sets of elicitation strategies to facilitate different aspects of children's language development, specifically American mothers focused on children's narrative skills whereas Thai mothers emphasized vocabulary learning. The two groups of children showed distinct patterns of conversation, for example, American children produced greater evaluative statements whereas Thai children repeated their mothers' utterances more, which aligned with socialization goals of each respective culture. Mother-child narrative styles also differed as a function of child gender. Additionally, significant positive correlations were observed between maternal and child linguistic measures. These findings provide evidence for cross-cultural variation in communicative styles and toy play practices of American and Thai mother-child dyads, which reflect the social norms of individualistic and collectivist cultures. More broadly, the present study suggests that dyadic engagement during play is important for children's development and socialization, as maternal speech transfers knowledge of culture-specific pragmatic rules that the children learn to apply in social interactions.

The current study examined the role of working memory in language activation during visual processing. Twenty-sixnative English speakers searched for a visual target while completing a concurrent linguistic memory task, a concurrentspatial memory task, or in the absence of dual-task demands. Linguistic activation was measured by comparing visualfixations to phonologically-overlapping items and control items whose names did not overlap with the target. Participantsexperienced significant phonological competition across all conditions, but memory load impacted the timing of competitorco-activation (delayed and more sustained under spatial load), as well as the magnitude (attenuated under both spatial andlinguistic loads) compared to the no-load condition. We conclude that linguistic representations are accessed duringvisual search even with concurrent cognitive loads, but that working memory influences the degree of language-basedcompetition, possibly by modulating the activation and maintenance of linguistic and spatial information.

Cross-cultural differences in book sharing practices of American and Thai mother-preschooler dyads were examined. Twenty-one Thai monolingual and 21 American-English monolingual mothers and their four-year-olds completed a book sharing task. Results revealed narrative style differences between the American and Thai groups: American mothers adopted a high-elaborative story-builder style and used affirmations, descriptions, extensions, and recasting more than Thai mothers. Thai mothers adopted a low-elaborative story-teller style and used more attention directives and expansions than American mothers. American children produced longer narratives than their Thai peers, whereas Thai children repeated their mothers' utterances more than their American counterparts. Maternal and child narrative styles were associated. These results suggest that maternal scaffolding styles differ across cultures and influence children's developing narrative skills.

According to the US Department of State, a native English speaker can learn Spanish in about 600 h, but would take four times as long to learn Japanese. While it may be intuitive that similarity between a foreign language and a native tongue can influence the ease of acquisition, what is less obvious are the specific cognitive and emotional processes that can lead to different outcomes. Here, we explored the influence of cognitive strategies and affective states on native English speakers' ability to learn artificial foreign words that vary in their similarity to the native language. Explicit word learning strategies were reported more often, and were more effective for learners of a more similar language, and cognitive strategies were especially helpful for learners with lower moods. We conclude that language similarity, strategy, and affect dynamically interact to ultimately determine success at learning novel languages.

Language experience influences cognition. Using behavioral and ERP measures, the present study examines whetherexperience with multiple languages can change how we form associations between concepts. Four experiments comparingbilingual and monolingual groups on semantic relatedness judgments indicate that highly proficient bilinguals perceiveconcepts as more related to one another than monolinguals. Results suggest that bilinguals denser lexical and phonologicalconnections across their two languages may shorten semantic distances between concepts. This finding is consistent withconnectionist models of language and suggests that the structure of the lexical and phonological systems may influenceconceptual level associations. We conclude that bilingualism has consequences for the structure of the language system atthe level of lexical-semantic connections.

Over the course of our lifetimes, we accumulate extensive experience associating the things that we see with the words we have learned to describe them. As a result, adults engaged in a visual search task will often look at items with labels that share phonological features with the target object, demonstrating that language can become activated even in non-linguistic contexts. This highly interactive cognitive system is the culmination of our linguistic and visual experiences--and yet, our understanding of how the relationship between language and vision develops remains limited. The present study explores the developmental trajectory of language-mediated visual search by examining whether children can be distracted by linguistic competitors during a non-linguistic visual search task. Though less robust compared to what has been previously observed with adults, we find evidence of phonological competition in children as young as 8 years old. Furthermore, the extent of language activation is predicted by individual differences in linguistic, visual, and domain-general cognitive abilities, with the greatest phonological competition observed among children with strong language abilities combined with weaker visual memory and inhibitory control. We propose that linguistic expertise is fundamental to the development of language-mediated visual search, but that the rate and degree of automatic language activation depends on interactions among a broader network of cognitive abilities.

Because learning a second language (L2) is difficult, manylearners start with easy words that look like their native lan-guage (L1) to jumpstart their vocabulary. However, this ap-proach may not be the most effective strategy in the long-term,compared to introducing difficult L2 vocabulary early on. Weexamined how L1 similarity affects pattern learning in L2 byteaching English monolinguals either an Englishlike or Non-Englishlike artificial language that contained repeated patterns.We found that the first words that individuals learned in anL2 influenced which words they acquired next. Specifically,learning a new word in one session made it easier to acquirea similar word in the next session. L2-similarity interactedwith L1-similarity, so that words that looked more like Englishwere easier to learn at first, but they were less effective at in-fluencing later word learning. This demonstrates that althoughnative language similarity has a beneficial effect early on, itmay hinder long-term learning by decreasing recognition of re-peated patterns within a second language. This surprising find-ing demonstrates that making early learning easier may not bethe most effective long-term strategy. Learning difficult vocab-ulary teaches the learner what makes the new language unique,and this general language knowledge about language structureis more valuable than the words themselves. We suggest thatdifficulties during learning are not always to be avoided, as ad-ditional effort early on can pay later dividends.

Using an eye-tracking paradigm, we examined the strengthand speed of access to lexical knowledge (e.g., ourrepresentation of the word dog in our mental vocabulary) andsemantic knowledge (e.g., our knowledge that a dog isassociated with a leash) via both spoken words (e.g., “dog”)and characteristic sounds (e.g., a dog’s bark). Results showthat both spoken words and characteristic sounds activatelexical and semantic knowledge, but with different patterns.Spoken words activate lexical knowledge faster thancharacteristic sounds do, but with the same strength. Incontrast, characteristic sounds access semantic knowledgestronger than spoken words do, but with the same speed.These findings reveal similarities and differences in theactivation of conceptual knowledge by verbal and non-verbalmeans and advance our understanding of how auditory inputis cognitively processed.

Bilinguals' two languages are both active in parallel, and controlling co-activation is one of bilinguals' principle challenges. Trilingualism multiplies this challenge. To investigate how third language (L3) learners manage interference between languages, Spanish-English bilinguals were taught an artificial language that conflicted with English and Spanish letter-sound mappings. Interference from existing languages was higher for L3 words that were similar to L1 or L2 words, but this interference decreased over time. After mastering the L3, learners continued to experience competition from their other languages. Notably, spoken L3 words activated orthography in all three languages, causing participants to experience cross-linguistic orthographic competition in the absence of phonological overlap. Results indicate that L3 learners are able to control between-language interference from the L1 and L2. We conclude that while the transition from two languages to three presents additional challenges, bilinguals are able to successfully manage competition between languages in this new context.

Can input in one sensory modality strengthen memory in adifferent sensory modality? To address this question, weasked participants to encode images presented in variouslocations (e.g., a depicted dog in the top left corner of thescreen) while they heard spatially uninformative sounds.Some of these sounds matched the image (e.g., the word“dog” or a barking sound) while others did not. In asubsequent memory test, participants were better atremembering the locations of images that were encoded witha matching sound, even though these sounds were spatiallyuninformative – an effect that was mediated by whether thesounds were verbal or non-verbal. Because the sounds did notprovide any relevant location information, better spatialmemory cannot be attributed to auditory memory; rather, it isattributed to visual memory being strengthened by thematching auditory input. These findings provide the firstbehavioral evidence for cross-modal interactions in memory.

Learning a new language involves significant vocabulary ac-quisition. Learners can accelerate this process by relying onwords with native-language overlap, such as cognates. Forbilingual third language learners, it is necessary to determinehow their two existing languages interact during novel lan-guage learning. A scaffolding account predicts transfer fromeither language for individual words, whereas an accumula-tion account predicts cumulative transfer from both languages.To compare these accounts, twenty English-German bilingualadults were taught an artificial language containing 48 novelwritten words that varied orthogonally in English and Germanwordlikeness (neighborhood size and orthotactic probability).Wordlikeness in each language improved word production ac-curacy, and similarity to one language provided the same bene-fit as dual-language overlap. In addition, participants’ memoryfor novel words was affected by the statistical distributions ofletters in the novel language. Results indicate that bilingualsutilize both languages during third language acquisition, sup-porting a scaffolding learning model.

Purpose: Understanding speech often involves processing input from multiple modalities. The availability of visual information may make auditory input less critical for comprehension. This study examines whether the auditory system is sensitive to the presence of complementary sources of input when exerting top-down control over the amplification of speech stimuli. Method: Auditory gain in the cochlea was assessed by monitoring spontaneous otoacoustic emissions (SOAEs), which are by-products of the amplification process. SOAEs were recorded while 32 participants (23 women, nine men; M[subscript age] = 21.13) identified speech sounds such as "ba" and "ga." The speech sounds were presented either alone or with complementary visual input, as well as in quiet or with 6-talker babble. Results: Analyses revealed that there was a greater reduction in the amplification of noisy auditory stimuli compared with quiet. This reduced amplification may aid in the perception of speech by improving the signal-to-noise ratio. Critically, there was a greater reduction in amplification when speech sounds were presented bimodally with visual information relative to when they were presented unimodally. This effect was evidenced by greater changes in SOAE levels from baseline to stimuli presentation in audiovisual trials relative to audio-only trials. Conclusions: The results suggest that even the earliest stages of speech comprehension are modulated by top-down influences, resulting in changes to SOAEs depending on the presence of bimodal or unimodal input. Neural processes responsible for changes in cochlear function are sensitive to redundancy across auditory and visual input channels and coordinate activity to maximize efficiency in the auditory periphery.

Most of the world's population has knowledge of at least two languages. Many of these bilinguals are also exposed to and identify with at least two cultures. Because language knowledge enables participation in cultural practices and expression of cultural beliefs, bilingual experience and cultural identity are interconnected. However, the specific links between bilingualism and cultural identity remain largely unidentified. The current study examined which aspects of bilingualism relate to identification with first- and second-language cultures. Two hundred and nine bilinguals completed a questionnaire probing linguistic background and cultural affiliations. Regression analyses indicated that cultural identification was predicted by age of language acquisition, language proficiency, foreign accentedness, and contexts of long-term language immersion and current language exposure. Follow-up analyses revealed that the language-culture relations were mediated by the age and manner in which the second language was acquired. These findings are situated within a proposed framework of bilingual cultural identity. By identifying features of bilingualism that are relevant for cultural identity, the current research increases our understanding of the relationship between language and culture.

Learning a new language involves substantial vocabulary acquisition. Learners can accelerate this process by relying on words with native-language overlap, such as cognates. For bilingual third language learners, it is necessary to determine how their two existing languages interact during novel language learning. A scaffolding account predicts transfer from either language for individual words, whereas an accumulation account predicts cumulative transfer from both languages. To compare these accounts, 20 English-German bilingual adults were taught an artificial language containing 48 novel written words that varied orthogonally in English and German wordlikeness (neighborhood size and orthotactic probability). Wordlikeness in each language improved word production accuracy, and similarity to one language provided the same benefit as dual-language overlap. In addition, bilinguals' memory for novel words was affected by the statistical distributions of letters in the novel language. Results indicate that bilinguals utilize both languages during third language acquisition, supporting a scaffolding learning model.