According to the critical period hypothesis, the earlier the acquisition of a second language starts, the better. Owing to the plasticity of the brain, up until a certain age a second language can be acquired successfully according to this view. Early second language learners are commonly said to have an advantage over later ones especially in…

Research on bilingual word recognition suggests that lexical access is nonselective with respect to language, i.e., that word representations of both languages become active during recognition. One piece of evidence supporting nonselective access is that bilinguals recognize cognates (words that are identical or similar in form and meaning in two…