The compound Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a classic measure of creativity. Participants are shown three cue words (sore-shoulder-sweat) and asked to generate a word that connects them (cold). Theoretical views of RAT performance differ in the degree to which they conceptualize performance as depending on automatic spreading activation across…

Bimodal bilingualism involves the use of a sign language and a spoken language, and offers a unique opportunity to explore the cognitive effects of growing up bilingual. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between bimodal bilingualism and executive function (EF) in hearing children who are native users of a sign language. We…

Research on first language (L1) attrition typically focuses on immigrant populations in their second language (L2) environment, yet we know comparably little about L1 attrition in the L1 setting. This study used two lexical tasks to test L1 attrition, a time-sensitive word decision task and a video retelling. Chinese teachers of English vs.…

The acquisition of a second language (L2) may be challenging in adulthood, as the phonological system of the native language (L1) can sometimes limit the perception of phonological contrasts in L2. The present study aimed to (a) examine the influence of an L1 (Hebrew) that lacks a phonemic contrast for vowel length on the ability to discriminate…

Language production ultimately aims to convey meaning. Yet words differ widely in the richness and density of their semantic representations, and these differences impact conceptual and lexical processes during speech planning. Here, we replicated the recent finding that semantic richness, measured as the number of associated semantic features…

Within the last two decades, researchers have begun to investigate how L2 learners process syntactic, morpho-syntactic, and lexical information during the comprehension of L2 sentences. The present study aimed to add to research by investigating how L1 influences L2 processing of sentences indicating plurality in constructions involving numerals.…

Word knowledge and the speed of word processing in monolingual children and adults are influenced by word properties, such as the age of acquisition (AoA), imageability, and frequency. Understanding how different properties of words contribute to the ease of processing by bilingual children is a critical step for establishing models of childhood…

The present study examined cross-linguistic differences in morphological processing in the visual and auditory modality. French and German adults performed a visual and auditory lexical decision task that involved the same translation-equivalent items. The focus of the study was on nonwords, which were constructed in a way that made it possible to…

Although previous research has observed a facilitative influence of the first language (L1) on the acquisition and processing of gender agreement in a second language (L2), particularly in language pairs with similar gender agreement marking, the question of whether knowledge of two languages with gender can confer an additional advantage for…

This study is aimed to re-examine the Interface Hypothesis via investigating the adult L2 acquisition of the word order variation of numeral classifier indefinites at the syntax-semantics and syntax-discourse interfaces in L2 Chinese. A computerized acceptability judgment task was administered to 41 advanced and intermediate adult Korean learners…

This study examines the effects of asymmetrical mappings of L2 sounds to L1 sounds on real-time processing of L2 phonology. L1-Korean participants completed a self-paced listening (SPL) task paired with a picture verification (PV) task, in which an English sentence was presented word by word along with a picture that matched or mismatched the…

This study aimed at investigating the influence of L1 (Turkish) on the acquisition of L2 (English) collocations by comparing the scores of two Turkish ELT student groups with a phrase-judgment test. The test included both congruent and incongruent collocations as well as unrelated word combinations. The participants whose vocabulary levels were…

Purpose: We investigated whether rhythm discrimination is mainly driven by the native language of the listener or by the fundamental design of the human auditory system and universal cognitive mechanisms shared by all people irrespective of rhythmic patterns in their native language. Method: In multiple experiments, we asked participants to listen…

Speaking fluently requires three main processes to run smoothly: conceptualization, formulation, and articulation. This study investigates to what extent fluency in spontaneous speech in both first (L1) and second (L2) languages can be explained by individual differences in articulatory skills. A group of L2 English learners (n = 51) performed…

In conversational speech, it is very common for words' segments to be reduced or deleted. However, previous research has consistently shown that during spoken word recognition, listeners prefer words' canonical pronunciation over their reduced pronunciations (e.g., pretty pronounced [word omitted] vs. [word omitted]), even when the latter are far…