Judith F. Kroll - US grants

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although proficient bilinguals rarely make the error of speaking words in the wrong language or thinking that they are reading text in a language other than the one intended, recent cognitive research on lexical access in word recognition and in spoken production suggests that information about both languages is active, at least briefly, in even highly skilled tasks such as reading and speaking. The absence of a simple mechanism to switch off one of the two languages when using the other suggests that skilled bilinguals possess a sophisticated means of controlling their performance. For this reason, bilingualism has become an important tool for psychologists who wish to model developing systems, the competition between them, and the consequences for executive control. The goal of the proposed research is to use behavioral and neurocognitive methods to identify factors that permit cross-language competition to be resolved in the planning of speech in each of the bilingual's languages. The specific aims of the planned research are to determine how far into speech planning there is activity of each language, what mechanism allows the intended language to be selected, and how the form of bilingualism modulates this activity. Until recently, cognitive science ignored the fact that more people in the world are bilingual than monolingual. In the past ten years this situation has changed markedly. There is now an appreciation that learning and using more than one language is a natural circumstance of cognition. Not only does research on bilingualism provide crucial evidence regarding the universality of cognitive principles, but it also provides an important tool for revealing constraints within the cognitive architecture. The proposed research will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational issues in an increasingly diverse society in which many learners are faced with the task of acquiring a second language past the earliest stages of childhood. It also holds implications for clinical practice for the assessment of a growing number of individuals seeking treatment who are non-native speakers of English. The research will further contribute to the infrastructure of science by training a more diverse group of students than is typical in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience and by fostering international scientific collaboration. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]

How does a bilingual read and speak words in one language when words in the other language are available and potentially compete for selection? Recent psycholinguistic research suggests that information in both of a bilingual's two languages is active during language comprehension and production. The bilingual is thus a model system to examine the conditions that give rise to competition and the manner in which that competition is resolved. This problem will be investigated in a series of experiments in which bilinguals read and speak words in one or both of their languages. The research has two aspects, comprehension and production of language. In each, experiments will examine the activation of alternative lexical candidates and the factors that modulate the resulting cross-language competition. In experiments on comprehension, word naming will be compared in the first and second languages. By manipulating the properties of the words to be named and the contexts in which they occur, it should be possible to identify the factors that induce and control language selection. In experiments on production, performance on picture naming and translation tasks will be compared to examine spoken word production in two languages. Using cued naming and task-switching paradigms, it should prove possible to examine the effects of requiring both languages to be active prior to speaking. The approach is intended to provide complementary methods for examining the activation of words in each language when a bilingual is required to speak a word in one language and to suppress or ignore information in the other language. The goal of this research is to develop converging approaches to study language comprehension and production in bilinguals. Together with existing research on monolingual language performance, the data generated by these studies should provide the basis for a more complete model of the bilingual lexicon. The mechanism of language selection that is the focus of the bilingual research has the more general potential to illuminate current debates about the type and timing of information available during comprehension and production. In this sense, bilingualism provides a useful tool for investigating universal cognitive constraints. The outcomes of this work also hold important implications for the more general problem of learning and using two languages.

ABSTRACT
Kroll & Sunderman 0111733

With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Gretchen Sunderman will collect data for her doctoral dissertation under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll. Her research will investigate the development of second language lexical fluency. Although it is common practice to have second language learners attempt to suppress their first language in classroom contexts, recent psycholinguistic research suggests that it is impossible to do so. Words in the first language are active and compete for selection even when learners intend to read or speak in the second language only. Ms. Sunderman's experiments will include three groups of native speakers of English at different stages of second language proficiency in Spanish. Her goal is to examine the activation of the first language as learners acquire Spanish. One set of experiments will examine the first language in comprehension, and another set of experiments will examine it in spoken production. Participants will also take a battery of individual differences tests in their first language. Comparisons of these second language learners to monolinguals matched on the individual differences measures will provide an examination of some cognitive consequences of second language learning for first language performance.

This research is important for several reasons. First, it will advance our understanding of the cognitive processes involved in second language lexical acquisition. Second, it will advance our understanding of cross-language competition at different levels of second language proficiency. Finally, in examining differences in individuals' ability to suppress the first language during second language comprehension and production, this research will inform second language pedagogy and enhance the success of learning and teaching of second language vocabulary.

Under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll, Ms. Ana Schwartz will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. Her research will examine reading in a second language. For many bilinguals, reading proficiency in a second language does not reach the same level of fluency as in the first language. One reason for this might be that word recognition processes are not as automatic in the second language as they are in the first language. Further, when reading in a second language, bilinguals are unable to "turn off" some information from their first language. The competition between the two languages makes it difficult for the second language reader to ignore first language influences. Ms. Schwartz will investigate how bilingual readers use sentence context to negotiate the competition between their two languages. One set of experiments uses response time measures to ask what type of information is available during reading in the second language. A second set of experiments uses eye movement measures to ask when that information is available. These experiments will involve English-Spanish and Spanish-English bilinguals, as well as a monolingual comparison group. An additional set of measures will assess the degree to which the answers to these research questions are affected by individual differences in the ability to allocate cognitive resources during reading.

This research contributes to the development of more comprehensive models of the reading process. It also has important implications for how reading is taught in multi-lingual classrooms. Given the increasing number of students in American schools whose first language is not English, and the central importance that reading holds for academic success, it is critical to understand the cognitive characteristics of second language reading.

Women in Cognitive Science (WICS) is an organization created by the Co-PIs of this proposal in 2001 and is affiliated with the Psychonomic Society. The goal of WICS is to enhance the success of women scientists who are pursuing careers in cognitive science, experimental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. The proposal describes a program which aims to sustain and extend WICS. The planned activities have the following objectives:
* to organize its structure more formally,
* to sustain its presence,
* to engage the participation of other senior women cognitive scientists in its leadership,
* to plan events to take place around the yearly meeting of the Psychonomic Society,
* to create a set of ongoing programs that will promote the advancement of all women in the field,
* to ensure the recognition and representation of senior women, and
* to address the needs of younger women facing the challenges of negotiating the initial stages of beginning a career.

The program proposed addresses both of NSF.s impact criteria. It encourages the participation of young scientists in professional meetings, promotes the mentoring and professional development of women and minorities, and aims to increase the visibility of senior women cognitive scientists who have been historically underrepresented in positions of leadership.

With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Noriko Hoshino will collect data on spoken production tasks in bilinguals for her doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll. This research will examine the cognitive processes that support bilinguals' ability to correctly choose the language in which they intend to speak. Much of the current research on spoken production in bilinguals has focused on bilinguals whose two languages share the same Roman alphabet. For these bilinguals, the evidence suggests that both languages are active even when the individual intends to speak one language alone. The question in the present research is whether the same parallel activity of the two languages will be observed for bilinguals whose two languages do not share the same script. In a series of six experiments, this issue will be examined by comparing the performance of Japanese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals on three spoken production tasks. One set of experiments uses a speeded picture-naming task to ask whether the phonological facilitation typically observed for same-script bilinguals when pictures have cognate names across languages will also be observed for different-script bilinguals. A second set of experiments investigates the magnitude of interference in picture naming when distractor words in the bilinguals' native language are presented during picture naming in the second language. A third set of experiments examines language switching performance for these two groups of bilinguals. Across the planned experiments, the performance of speakers from these two groups will be compared for bilinguals living in a native-language context vs. those immersed in a second language environment. An additional set of language-independent measures will assess the degree to which the results of these experiments are affected by individual differences in the ability to allocate cognitive resources in planning spoken utterances.

This research project has a number of broader implications. It will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational issues in a society in which many learners are faced with the task of acquiring a second language past the earliest stages of childhood. The focus in the proposed research on the linguistic and cognitive factors that influence speech planning will provide crucial new information about how skilled oral proficiency in a second language is accomplished. The research will also contribute to the training of an increasingly diverse group of cognitive scientists by including undergraduate students, many of whom are bilingual themselves, and will foster international scientific collaboration.

With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Susan Bobb will collect data for her doctoral dissertation under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll. This research will examine the cognitive processes underlying second language development. In the past decade there has been a notable increase in research investigating bilingualism and second language learning. Many of these current studies suggest that the cognitive architecture underlying second language performance is remarkably adaptive to accommodate acquisition of a new language. However, some limitations remain. The goal of the proposed research is to further clarify constraints to language learning and help address questions that have not yet been fully resolved. The planned experiments examine the degree to which learners and proficient bilinguals are able to fully access grammatical knowledge of the second language. The specific aim of the proposed research is to identify the ability of intermediate and advanced English-German bilinguals to comprehend the assignment of grammatical gender (e.g., das Glas 'the glass') and to interpret the meaning of compound nouns (e.g., das Weinglas 'the wineglas'). Grammatical gender is a feature that is typically considered difficult to acquire in a second/foreign language. Particularly for those whose native language does not mark gender, such as English, the question has been raised whether full acquisition of gender can take place and under which circumstances. As a morphological process which is very productive in German, compounding provides an ideal situation to investigate this acquisition process and further define the developmental trajectory of second language acquisition of gender. The current study will provide data that will contribute to the resolution of current debates about the degree to which second language learners can acquire and process subtle aspects of the non-native language. The goal of the proposed research program is to provide converging evidence using both behavioral as well as neurocognitive methods (i.e., event-related potentials) in order to broaden current understanding regarding possible constraints in bilingual language processing.

Together with previous research on second language semantics and syntax, the current research on gender and compounds will provide a basis for developing a deeper understanding of language comprehension. A more complete understanding of the factors that restrict or enable full access to the second language and that modulate the time course of language processing for comprehension will provide a basis for developing strategies that can be used in improving second language instruction and pedagogy. Given the requirement for many in contemporary US society to acquire functional, if not full, proficiency in another language, the planned research holds promise for instructional approaches that make use of known constraints. The research will also contribute to the training of an increasingly diverse group of language scientists by including undergraduate research students who are themselves bilingual and by fostering international scientific collaboration.

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The PI is a cognitive psychologist whose work examines the processes that support the acquisition and proficient use of a second language by learners and bilinguals. The goal of the present proposal for a senior NRSA fellowship is to gain additional training in cognitive neuroscience. The new training will allow the PI to extend her research program, which has relied on behavioral measures of language processing, to electrophysiological measures using event-related potentials (ERPs). Recent studies investigating adult L2 performance have shown that even among the most proficient bilinguals, there is parallel activity of both languages when only one language is required. The aim of the planned research is to acquire training in electro-physiological methods that will allow the PI to examine the behavioral and neural specific consequences of cross-language activation for comprehension and production in both the L1 and L2. A specific aim is to identify conditions that give rise to cross-language competition, to map the time course of activation of each of the bilingual's language, and to begin to consider the factors that may reduce competition to allow bilinguals to effectively choose the language the intended language. Two series of experiments using both behavioral and ERP methods are planned for the training period. One addresses the issue of cross-language activation in sentence context. The other seeks to extend the PI's past research on language production. A distributed training model is proposed to accomplish these goals, with extended visits to the primary sponsor, Dr. Phillip Holcomb, a leading ERP researcher at Tufts University, and to the co-sponsors, over a two year period that will allow the PI to integrate the new training into her research program at the home institution. The proposed research will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational issues in an increasingly diverse society in which many individuals are faced with the task of learning to speak a second language past the earliest stages of childhood. The planned training will also contribute to the infrastructure of science. The language science of bilingualism attracts a more diverse group of students than is typical in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. The proposed training will enable the PI to extend the reach of her current research program in a way that will potentially impact a broad range of students. The planned research and training will also foster international scientific collaboration. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]

Until recently, cognitive science ignored the fact that most people of the world, and an increasing number of people in the US, are bilingual. In the past ten years this situation has changed markedly. There is now an appreciation that learning and using more than one language is a natural circumstance of cognition. Not only does research on bilingualism provide crucial evidence regarding the universality of cognitive principles, but it also provides an important tool for revealing constraints within the cognitive architecture. Although proficient bilinguals rarely make the error of speaking words in the wrong language or thinking that they are reading text in a language other than the one intended, recent cognitive research on lexical access in word recognition and in spoken production suggests that information about both languages is active, at least briefly, in even highly skilled tasks such as reading and speaking. The absence of a simple mechanism to switch off one of the two languages when using the other suggests that skilled bilinguals possess a sophisticated means of controlling their performance. For this reason, bilingualism has become an important tool for psychologists who wish to model developing systems, the competition between them, and the consequences for executive control. The goal of the proposed research is to use behavioral and neurocognitive methods to identify factors that permit cross-language competition to be resolved in the planning of speech in each of the bilingual's languages. The specifc aims of the planned research are to determine how far into speech planning there is activity of each language, how the form of bilingualism modulates this activity, and what contexts of language acquisition and use reduce cross-language competition. The proposed research will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational and health issues in an increasingly diverse society in which many learners are faced with the task of learning to speak a second language past the earliest stages of childhood. The research will also contribute to the infrastructure of science by training a more diverse group of students than is typical in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience and by fostering international scientific collaboration.

Language scientists have discovered that bilinguals cannot easily "switch off" one of their languages. If bilinguals cannot easily function as monolinguals, then how do they control the use of the intended language? This research program investigates the conditions that enable bilinguals to select the intended language when words and grammatical structures in both languages are available. The work will explore how some sentence contexts restrict language processing to one language alone but others encourage code switching between the bilingual's two languages. The work uses the experience of bilinguals as a window into the nature of the interactions that characterize language processing and their consequences for cognitive control.

This project has a number of broader implications. It seeks foundational knowledge about multilingualism that can inform educational issues in a society in which many learners are faced with the task of acquiring a second language after the earliest stages of childhood. The research will also contribute to the training of a diverse group of cognitive scientists by including bilingual undergraduate and graduate students and by fostering an international scientific collaboration with scientists in Spain.

This PIRE project, a collaboration between three U.S. and seven foreign institutions in Europe and Asia, will investigate the cognitive and neural consequences of bilingualism to understand the ways in which multiple languages are learned and used. Recent behavioral and neuroscience evidence suggests that there is more extensive processing interaction between the two languages of a bilingual than previously thought, and this is true even when bilinguals are using only one language. Bilingual science therefore provides a tool for revealing fundamental principles about the mind and the brain otherwise obscured in research focused on monolinguals. The next stage of research on bilingualism calls for national and international collaborations to unify our understanding of the nature of the bilingual mind and brain, the process of bilingual language development, and the consequences of bilingualism for cognition. International collaboration is essential for accessibility to widely differing bilingual populations of several spoken, written, and signed languages. This award enables an international network of collaborators with common research goals and methods to exploit unique and complementary opportunities to investigate properties of human languages. Leveraging the diverse perspectives inherent in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research will facilitate the establishment of a world-class research context for investigating bilingualism science, enable generalization of research findings, and exploit bilingualism as a tool for investigating the representation and processing of language in the mind and brain.

This PIRE project will bring together the complementary international expertise of collaborators studying bilinguals who communicate in a variety of languages (e.g., Spanish, Catalan, Welsh, and Chinese). A unique feature of this project is the partnership of U.S. and Dutch scientists exploring the consequences of bimodal bilingualism in deaf people. The NSF-funded VL2 Science of Learning Center at Gallaudet University, a world leader in education for deaf students and research on topics related to deaf people, focuses on issues of visual language processing recognizing deaf readers as bilinguals using a signed language for communication yet reading a written language. Researchers in The Netherlands also study sign language and gesture, deaf literacy development, and speech-sign translation but using different signed and written languages. The convergence of these projects provides a unique opportunity for cross-linguistic collaboration and training that would not be possible in the U.S. alone.

Enthusiasm for bilingualism research naturally draws an unusually diverse group of students, scientists, and research participants. This PIRE project will be committed to harnessing that excitement to create opportunities for broadening participation in science by research participants from a broad spectrum of ages and linguistic abilities, and by students and researchers from groups under-represented in the sciences. This PIRE project will provide training and research opportunities to students and scientists not possible without the international collaboration, such as conducting research abroad, participating in virtual international colloquia, developing and sustaining international collaborations, and training by industrial partners with specific expertise in speech, literacy, and neuroimaging. The project also provides institutional opportunities for research with diverse populations, enriching undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral training, and increasing opportunities for early career faculty to develop research programs globally engaged and solidly grounded in cross-disciplinary collaborations.

The nature of the science of bilingualism is inherently interdisciplinary and cross-cultural and this project provides opportunities for the participating U.S. institutions to strengthen international offices and activities, develop survey tools to evaluate student's international experiences, and provide energy and synergy for integration and for strengthening links across disciplinary units. This project will strengthen the U.S.'s scientific capital through international training not otherwise available in the U.S. U.S. institutions will benefit from attracting international visiting researchers and students to enrich the internationalizing initiatives and cultures on their campuses. The U.S. population is also increasingly bilingual with ever-diversifying demographic and cultural characteristics so research results are expected to reach well beyond academia.

U.S. project partners include The Pennsylvania State University, Gallaudet University (D.C.), and Haskins Laboratories at Yale University (CT). International partners include ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, Bangor University (Bangor, UK), the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (Leipzig, Germany), Universidad de Granada (Granada, Spain), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain), Radboud University Nijmegen (Nijmegen, The Netherlands), Beijing Normal University (Beijing, China), and the University of Hong Kong (China).

This project was jointly funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering and the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences.

With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Cari Bogulski will collect data for her doctoral dissertation under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll and Dr. Janet van Hell. Current research demonstrates that bilinguals are often advantaged relative to their monolingual counterparts on tasks that require cognitive control. A few past studies have also identified a bilingual advantage in the realm of word learning. However, these documented benefits of bilingualism are largely correlational, with little known about the underlying mechanisms that map language use to cognition and learning. One possibility is that all of the documented benefits of bilingualism reflect the effects of the constant mental juggling a bilingual at any age must exercise, as both of a bilingual's two languages appear to be active even when one language alone is required. Alternatively, different aspects of language use may map onto different types of cognitive consequences. The proposed research seeks to uncover the way that the use of multiple languages affects language learning as well as learning in other domains. The planned experiments will test the scope of the bilingual advantage in foreign language vocabulary learning by using electrophysiological measures that may provide a more sensitive index of the time course of early learning, compare the learning of linguistic and nonlinguistic information, and determine whether the bilingual advantage can be seen in the learning of a signed vs. spoken language. The goal of this set of experiments is to identify the cognitive mechanisms that underlie foreign vocabulary learning, and thus, to identify how learning a foreign language can be strategically enhanced.

The funded research has a number of broader implications. It will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational issues in a society in which many learners are faced with the task of acquiring a second language past the earliest stages of childhood. The research will also contribute to the training of an increasingly diverse group of language scientists by including undergraduate research students who are themselves bilingual and by fostering scientific collaboration at Gallaudet University to include signed as well as spoken languages.

With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Rhonda McClain will collect data for her doctoral dissertation under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll and Dr. Eleonora Rossi. Speaking fluently in a second language is a notoriously difficult skill to develop as a late learner, presumably because the second language competes for selection with the native language. Current research demonstrates that bilinguals experience persistent activation of both languages even when speaking one language alone. A critical question is how bilinguals prevent speaking the more dominant or native language when trying to speak the second language. Recent studies have reported that the native language becomes inhibited, or suppressed, in order to speak in the second language. However, little is known about what type of information becomes inhibited in the native language. One possibility is that all of the words in one language are suppressed. Alternatively, a network of words that bear resemblance in meaning to each other become active or inhibited together. Another possibility is that specific words that had been spoken in the other language are inhibited. It is also unclear whether inhibition is momentary or long lasting. The planned experiments will test the scope of inhibition (what is inhibited) its time course (the duration of inhibition) by using electrophysiological measures that may provide a more sensitive index of the earliest moments of speech planning. A comparison of bilinguals and monolinguals will also determine whether the repeated requirement for bilinguals to inhibit their native or more dominant language confers expertise in the realm of inhibitory control relative to monolingual speakers.

The funded research has a number of broader implications. It will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational issues in a society in which many learners are faced with the task of acquiring a second language past the earliest stages of childhood and at risk for academic failure unless they acquire the second language rapidly. The inhibitory processes that are the target of the planned investigation hold implications for better understanding the ability of bilinguals to maintain the two languages under conditions that may support the use of only one language. The research will also contribute to the training of an increasingly diverse group of language scientists by including undergraduate research students who are themselves bilingual.

A hallmark of bilingual language processing is the parallel activation of the two languages during the use of only one language in production comprehension. In order to select a word in a single language from the myriad of co-activated words, bilinguals exploit an exquisite mechanism of language control that may come to affect cognitive and executive function. However, the exact nature of this mechanism is unknown. With National Science Foundation support, Mr. Jason Gullifer will collect data for his dissertation under the direction of Drs. Judith Kroll and Paola Dussias. Using an array of experimental methodologies, including behavioral and electrophysiological measures, Gullifer and colleagues will investigate whether differences in sentence structure between English and Spanish can function as a cue enabling bilingual speakers of those two languages to make a language choice during comprehension. Reaction times to name words in the context of sentences and brain potentials time-locked to the presentation of those words will be used to test the hypothesis that structural differences between languages can influence the degree of language co-activation. An independent behavioral experiment utilizing a method to measure cross-language syntactic priming will be used to determine the degree of representational overlap of each of the structures between Spanish and English, revealing the relationship between the degree of cross-language overlap and language co-activation.

The funded research has a number of broader impacts. Increasing diversity makes it important to learn a second language to enhance communication. The biological basis of second language learning was identified in 2005 in the AAAS publication 'Science' as one of the top 125 questions for scientific inquiry over the next quarter-century. The proposed research informs language learning by advancing models of language comprehension and production. Learning a second language also confers benefits to cognition, and the funded research will identify one mechanism by which language selection is achieved, helping to answer the question of how bilingualism impacts cognition. The proposed research includes a component for the mentorship of undergraduate research assistants by involving individuals who have been historically underrepresented in scientific research.

This Postdoctoral Research Fellowship supports the career development of a recent Ph.D. graduate from the University of California, Berkeley in the field of Linguistics. The research is supervised by two professors from the Center for Language Science at the Pennsylvania State University. This interdisciplinary research project is an important step toward understanding the commonalities and differences between monolingual and multilingual language processing. Bilingualism has historically been treated as its own separate field, but the current study contributes a unique set of data that can be exploited to better understand the cognitive resources that underlie all language processing. A better understanding of bilingual/multilingual linguistic norms is critical for the development of effective teaching curricula and assessments. In addition, the results of this work have the potential to be useful for diagnostic and treatment materials in a clinical setting.

This research incorporates methods from phonetics, corpus linguistics, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to better understand the time course of processes underlying speech production and speech perception. The project uses bilingual language processing as a context that can reveal cognitive mechanisms that are otherwise hidden in monolingual speakers. The specific research questions target the interplay between the neural signature of inhibitory processes, as revealed using Event Related Potentials (ERPs), and the behavioral outcome of that inhibition, as revealed in acoustic measures of speech articulation. The studies take advantage of bilinguals' ability to switch languages mid-sentence. The training component of this project is both theoretical and methodological. The project capitalizes on the Fellow's previous training while simultaneously familiarizing her with the theoretical background necessary to conduct research related to the cognitive psychology of bilingualism, and the methodological training necessary to incorporate neurocognitive and eyetracking methods into her future work. The intellectual merit of the proposed research is its ability to tie together findings from traditionally separate approaches to studying language.

This postdoctoral fellowship grant supports a recent Ph.D. graduate in the interdisciplinary field of psycholinguistics. Findings from this research will inform whether gaining a second language proficiency has widespread effects on how reading comprehension ability is impacted by cognitive decline. They may also have implications for the availability and necessity of second language learning in early education. The research also contributes to the infrastructure of science in two ways: (1) by including a more diverse sample of research participants than is typical in psycholinguistic research, and (2) by involving the mentorship of research assistants who come from groups that are historically under-represented in scientific research. Results from this research are disseminated to broad audiences at national and international academic conferences in an effort to inform the community about the potential benefits of being bilingual and counteract stereotypes about second language use and proficiency, especially in older adult populations.

Within the language domain, readers form predictions about what language input is likely to come next. Of particular interest is whether and how well readers recover when the predictions they generate prove to be incorrect (i.e., when unexpected, though plausible language input is encountered). The proposed study will utilize the timecourse sensitivity of event-related potential (ERP) methodology to determine what mechanism(s) underlie successful recovery from this type of mis-prediction. The PI previously completed PhD training in electrophysiological measures of language processing with a focus on semantics and language comprehension, and has recently received training in bilingualism and second language (L2) processing. The current application takes advantage of that training and expands the PI?s previous work to study prediction in populations that have not previously been examined in this area of research, primarily: older adult bilingual speakers. Bilingualism provides a rich environment for examining two crucial aspects of prediction: (1) whether resource limitations or differences in the nature of L2 processing constrain readers? ability to generate predictions online, and (2) whether inhibitory control affects readers? sensitivity to prediction costs. Inhibitory control has been implicated as a critical process in the successful recovery from mis-prediction. As inhibitory control has also been shown to change significantly as a function of L2 experience and cognitive decline, the proposed project will inform current theories across multiple disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, aging, and neuroscience. The current research agenda, therefore, has the potential to further our understanding of how healthy aging impacts language processing in the brain, and provide a novel way of looking at how bilingual experience may apply to the domain of reading comprehension within this context.

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Adult learners often find it difficult to acquire a high level of proficiency in a second language (L2). The literature on L2 learning is rich with evidence and debate concerning the source of constraints that potentially challenge complete acquisition at each level of language processing. Despite the documented constraints, some learners manage to successfully achieve native-like performance in the L2, but the evidence on what it takes for a learner to be successful or for a learning context to be enabling is mixed. Having a high level of cognitive resources or being immersed in the L2 context all appear to contribute to positive outcomes, but not uniquely. In the planned research we take direction from recent findings on proficient bilinguals to test a new hypothesis about second language learning. The hypothesis is that successful L2 learners are individuals who are able to tolerate change to the native language. That change may involve processing costs that initially slow the native language and make native language performance more error prone, make learners less sensitive to some features of the native language, and that open the native language to the influences of the L2. High levels of cognitive resources and immersion in the L2 may enhance this process but what is hypothesized to be fundamental is change to the first language (L1) that functionally allows the L2 to develop as part of the language system. We review the background on bilingualism on which this hypothesis is based, present pilot data that reveal costs to language processing during early stages of L2 learning, and then consider evidence from the literature on learning and memory that suggests that initial costs to learning may result in more successful later outcomes. We then outline a program of research that investigates changes to the native language that occur during the course of adult L2 learning. We will examine learners at different levels of proficiency, in typical classroom learning contexts and under conditions of language immersion. We contrast changes to the native language at the level of the lexicon, the grammar, and the phonology, comparing comprehension and production, using behavioral measures of speed and accuracy, eye tracking measures during reading, and electrophysiological measures that examine the earliest time course of language processing. Although the focus in the planned research is on the L1, all experiments also assess performance in the L2 to consider the relationship between L1 change and L2 performance. A specific question is whether there is a relationship between L1 change during L2 learning and the degree of L1 transfer, a mechanism that has been identified as an important feature of initial L2 learning. The new hypothesis leads to the counterintuitive prediction that individuals who are able to tolerate change to the native language may be less likely to depend as heavily on L1 transfer as individuals who maintain the autonomy of the L1.

Adults often find it difficult to learn a second language. Some adult learners do manage to successfully achieve native-like performance in a second language, but how that occurs or what helps the learner is still unknown. The planned studies will investigate a new hypothesis that proposes that successful adult learners are individuals who are able to tolerate change in their native language. The changes that may be required to enable successful adult language learning may involve processing costs that initially slow the native language and make native language performance more error prone, make learners less sensitive to some features of the native language, and that open the native language to the influences of the language being learned. The project asks whether some adults are better able to accommodate the changes to the native language and, as a result, are more likely to succeed in mastering a second language.

Using both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, the investigators will examine learners at different levels of proficiency in typical classroom learning contexts, immersed in English in the US or in Spanish in Spain. Changes to the native language will be examined at the level of the lexicon and the grammar, comparing comprehension and production, using behavioral measures of speed and accuracy, eye tracking measures during reading, and electrophysiological measures that examine the earliest time course of language processing.

The research has a number of broader implications for improving adult second language learning. It can also inform educational issues in a society in which many learners, e.g., immigrant adolescents, are faced with the task of acquiring a second language past the earliest stages of childhood and for whom failure in this task is associated with poor academic, social, and economic outcomes. The research will contribute to the training of a diverse group of cognitive scientists by involving both undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom are bilinguals or second language learners themselves, and will foster an international scientific collaboration.

OISE-1545900: PIRE: Translating cognitive and brain science in the laboratory and field to language learning environments

PI: Judith F. Kroll, The Pennsylvania State University
Co-PIs: Paola E. Dussias, The Pennsylvania State University
John Lipski, The Pennsylvania State University
Janet van Hell, The Pennsylvania State University


In this PIRE project, The Pennsylvania State University partners with domestic and international collaborators in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, to conduct research that exploits the excitement of recent scientific discoveries that demonstrate that the use of two or more languages changes minds and brains to be more open to learning, more cognitively flexible, and more resistant to cognitive decline. The goal of the project is to translate the science of language learning for education and to examine the contexts and consequences of language learning in the classroom and in the field for a population who are increasingly diverse and range from learners to highly proficient bilinguals. The planned research will impact learners immersed in their native or second language, examine bilinguals who are young and old, and develop new models of learning and literacy. This PIRE will bring language science from the laboratory to practice and will integrate field research with laboratory-based experimentation to provide unique new data on minority and endangered languages, populations with limited literacy, and the consequences of living and learning in a multilingual environment. It will train a diverse workforce of language scientists to be prepared to conduct both basic and applied research and will develop new international collaborations that translate basic science in culturally diverse contexts.

Research on language learning and bilingualism has been fueled by a set of scientific discoveries made possible by emerging neuroscience technologies and the analysis of large scale corpora. These new discoveries show that there is far greater experience-induced plasticity than traditionally understood. Not only are infants and young children open to new learning, but older children, young adults, and even older adults are open to new experience that changes their brains and behavior. The broad PIRE network of partnerships will enable investigations in contexts where the form of language learning and language contact differ from the environments that have typically informed research to date. The PIRE will train undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows to conduct translational research across three broad themes: (1) Language learning across the life span; (2) The role of instructional approaches for successful learning outcomes; and (3) The impact of diverse social environments for language learning. The planned research will exploit a range of behavioral, neuroscience, and field methods to identify readiness and need for intervention, to track learning in real time, and to assess new learning outcomes.