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Psycholinguistics – the field of science that examines the mental processes and knowledge structures involved in the acquisition, comprehension, and production of language – had a strong monolingual orientation during the first four decades following its emergence around 1950. The awareness that a large part of mankind speaks more than one language – that this may impact both on the way each individual language is used and on the thought processes of bilinguals and multilinguals, and that, consequently, our theories on human linguistic ability and its role in non-linguistic cognition are incomplete and, perhaps, false – has led to a steep growth of studies on bilingualism and multilingualism since around 1995. This textbook introduces the reader to the field of study that examines language acquisition, comprehension and production from the perspective of the bilingual and multilingual speaker. It furthermore provides an introduction to studies that investigate the implications of being bilingual on various aspects of non-linguistic cognition. The major topics covered are the development of language in children growing up in a bilingual environment either from birth or relatively soon after, late foreign language learning, and word recognition, sentence comprehension, speech production, and translation processes in bilinguals. Furthermore, the ability of bilinguals and multilinguals to generally produce language in the \"intended\" language is discussed, as is the cognitive machinery that enables this. Finally, the consequences of bilingualism and multilingualism for non-linguistic cognition and findings and views regarding the biological basis of bilingualism and multilingualism are presented. The textbook’s primary readership are students and researchers in Cognitive Psychology, Linguistics, and Applied Linguistics, but teachers of language and translators and interpreters who wish to become better informed on the cognitive and biological basis of bilingualism and multilingualism will also benefit from it. 1. Introduction. 2. Early Bilingualism and Age Effects on (First and) Second Language Learning. 3. Late Foreign Vocabulary Learning and Lexical Representation. 4. Comprehension Processes: Word Recognition and Sentence Processing. 5. Word Production and Speech Accents. 6. Language Control. 7. Cognitive Consequences of Bilingualism and Multilingualism. 8. Bilingualism and the Brain. \"Language and Cognition in Bilinguals and Multilinguals: An Introduction is much more than an introduction. The volume makes a major contribution to the field, and in spite of its accessibility it is a serious read for interested researchers and postgraduate students from different backgrounds. ... a tour de force.\" - Benedetta Bassetti, Centre for Language Learning Research, University of York, UK, in the American Journal of Psychology, Fall 2013 \"De Groot offers a comprehensive and complete state-of-the-art approach to language and multilingualism.\" - Kees de Bot, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, in the Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics \"[This book] is an important volume that provides a theoretically sophisticated, lucid, exceptionally well-written overview of the complex, interdisciplinary field of psycholinguistics. ... [The book] provides far more than its title would lead one to expect. It provides a beautifully clear blend of cutting-edge theory, a thorough and well integrated overview of important trends in the current literature, an exemplary model of critical thinking, and a sound basis for experimental analysis of thought and language. ... The author has produced a work of lasting value that should become a standard text in this important emerging specialty field.\" - James A. Moses Jr., Ph.D., Stanford University School of Medicine, USA, in PsycCRITIQUES \"This volume is a really impressive achievement and a major contribution to the field. It provides historical depth, lucid exposition and up-to-date theoretical treatment.\" - David W. Green, Ph.D., University College London, UK \"The introductory nature of the book and format of the chapters, including the introduction, methods and task, evidence and summary of the main findings provides a coherent structure making the book easy for anyone to read: bilinguals, bilingual program administrators, interpreters and bilingual teachers. The glossary, figures and references provided in the book should also encourage graduate students and researchers in the field of bilingualism and psycholinguistics to conduct future research on bilingualism.\" - Muhammad Asif Qureshi, Department of English, Northern Arizona University (NAU), Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

In four experiments the representation of words in a Dutch-English bilingual lexicon was examined. Within- and between-language repetition-priming and associative (semantic)-priming effects were compared. In Experiments 1 and 2 only cognate words were presented, whereas in Experiments 3 and 4 also noncognates served as stimuli. In Experiment 1 the primes were presented unmasked; in Experiments 2 and 4 they were masked by means of a forward/backward masking technique; in Experiment 3 they occurred under both masked and unmasked presentation conditions. Within- and between-language repetition-priming and associative-priming effects were obtained, both under masked and unmasked presentation conditions, but in the masking condition the between-language associative priming effect for noncognates disappeared. The results suggest separate but connected lexical representations for Dutch-English translation equivalents, both for cognates and noncognates, shared conceptual representations for Dutch-English cognate translations, and separate conceptual representations for noncognate translations.

The typical speech of (fluent) bilinguals in monolingual settings contains few switches into the non-target language. Apparently, bilinguals can control what language they output. This article discusses views on how bilinguals exert control over their two languages in monolingual tasks, where participants only have to implicate one of their languages in performing the task, and in translation and, especially, simultaneous interpreting, tasks that can only be performed if both languages are addressed. A distinction is made between “global” control, where control involves the activation and/or inhibition of complete language systems, and “local” control, where control impacts on a restricted set of memory representations. A number of studies suggest that bilingual control is a special case of the control of action in general. This insight suggests an opportunity to incorporate relevant work in the field of translation studies in the study of bilingual control, embedding it in the same theoretical framework.

Purpose: Researchers have used the distortion-sensitivity approach in the psychoacoustical domain to investigate the role of auditory processing abilities in speech perception in noise (van Schijndel, Houtgast, & Festen, 2001; Goverts & Houtgast, 2010). In this study, the authors examined the potential applicability of the distortion-sensitivity approach for investigating the role of linguistic abilities in speech understanding in noise. Method: The authors applied the distortion-sensitivity approach by measuring the processing of visually presented masked text in a condition with manipulated syntactic, lexical, and semantic cues and while using the Text Reception Threshold (George et al., 2007; Kramer, Zekveld, & Houtgast, 2009; Zekveld, George, Kramer, Goverts, & Houtgast, 2007) method. Two groups that differed in linguistic abilities were studied: 13 native and 10 non-native speakers of Dutch, all typically hearing university students. Results: As expected, the non-native subjects showed substantially reduced performance. The results of the distortion-sensitivity approach yielded differentiated results on the use of specific linguistic cues in the 2 groups. Conclusion: The results show the potential value of the distortion-sensitivity approach in studying the role of linguistic abilities in speech understanding in noise of individuals with hearing impairment.

Until recently, cognitive science virtually ignored the fact that most people of the world are bilingual. During the past ten years this situation has changed markedly. There is now an appreciation that learning and using more than one language is the more natural circumstance of cognition. As a result, there is a wealth of new research on second-language learning and bilingualism that provides not only crucial evidence for the universality of cognitive principles, but also an important tool for revealing constraints within the cognitive architecture. In this volume, Judith Kroll and Annette de Groot have brought together the scientists at the forefront of research on second-language learning and bilingualism to present chapters that, rather than focusing simply on their own research, provide the first comprehensive overviews of this emerging field. Bilingualism provides a lens through which each of the central questions about language and cognition can be viewed. The five sections of this book focus on different facets of those questions: How is language acquired when infants are exposed to multiple-language input from birth, and how is it acquired when adults are required to learn a second language after early childhood? How do adult bilinguals comprehend and produce words and sentences when their two languages are potentially always active and in competition with one another? What are the neural mechanisms that underlie proficient bilingualism? What are the general consequences of bilingualism for cognition and for language and thought? This handbook will be essential reading for cognitive psychologists, linguists, applied linguists, and educators who wish to better understand the cognitive basis of bilingualism and the logic of experimental and formal approaches to language science.

The determinants of performance in word translation by unbalanced bilinguals, fairly fluent in their second language, were studied. Translation was both from the subjects′ native (L1) to their second (L2) language and in the reverse direction (\"forward\" and backward\" translation, respectively). The predictor variables were imageability, context availability, definition accuracy, familiarity, word frequency, length (each of these six was determined for the L1 and L2 words separately), and the cognate status of the translation equivalents. Both forward and backward word translation were influenced by meaning variables, familiarity variables, and cognate status. However, meaning played a somewhat more important role in forward than in backward translation, whereas familiarity appeared to have a larger influence in backward translation. A few other differences between forward and backward translation were detected, but, when considering the complete stimulus set, the differences between translation directions were generally small. In some of the subsets of the stimulus materials (particularly noncognates) larger directional differences occurred. Particularly relevant is the finding that meaning affects backward translation, because it suggests a qualification of the \"asymmetry model\" of word translation as proposed by Kroll and Stewart (1994).

As tantalizing as the idea that background music beneficially affects foreign vocabulary learning may seem, there is-partly due to a lack of theory-driven research-no consistent evidence to support this notion. We investigated inter-individual differences in the effects of background music on foreign vocabulary learning. Based on Eysenck's theory of personality we predicted that individuals with a high level of cortical arousal should perform worse when learning with background music compared to silence, whereas individuals with a low level of cortical arousal should be unaffected by background music or benefit from it. Participants were tested in a paired-associate learning paradigm consisting of three immediate word recall tasks, as well as a delayed recall task one week later. Baseline cortical arousal assessed with spontaneous EEG measurement in silence prior to the learning rounds was used for the analyses. Results revealed no interaction between cortical arousal and the learning condition (background music vs. silence). Instead, we found an unexpected main effect of cortical arousal in the beta band on recall, indicating that individuals with high beta power learned more vocabulary than those with low beta power. To substantiate this finding we conducted an exact replication of the experiment. Whereas the main effect of cortical arousal was only present in a subsample of participants, a beneficial main effect of background music appeared. A combined analysis of both experiments suggests that beta power predicts the performance in the word recall task, but that there is no effect of background music on foreign vocabulary learning. In light of these findings, we discuss whether searching for effects of background music on foreign vocabulary learning, independent of factors such as inter-individual differences and task complexity, might be a red herring. Importantly, our findings emphasize the need for sufficiently powered research designs and exact replications of theory-driven experiments when investigating effects of background music and inter-individual variation on task performance.

Alphabetic orthographies vary in the (in)consistency of the relations between spelling and sound patterns. In transparent orthographies, like Italian, the pronunciation can be predicted from the spelling, in contrast to opaque orthographies such as English, where spelling-sound correspondences are often inconsistent. The pronunciation of English vowel letters is in particular very ambiguous. In this paper, we provide a cross-linguistic investigation of orthographic transparency at the word-initial letter-phoneme level, resulting in ranked metrics for the seven languages investigated--Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Portuguese, expressed as entropy values. We focus on the contributions of vowels and consonants towards the overall orthographic transparency and provide evidence that deviations from consistent word-initial 1:1 mappings between letters and phonemes influence reaction times in naming tasks. Implications for theories of visual word recognition and speech production will be discussed.