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Previous studies have suggested that bilingual production experience has beneficial effects on executive functions. In the current study, four experiments were conducted to investigate whether bilingual comprehension experience influences executive functions. In Experiments 1 and 2, Chinese–English bilinguals completed a flanker task interleaved with a language comprehension task (reading comprehension in Experiment 1 and listening comprehension in Experiment 2). There were three blocks distinguished by language context, with a Chinese (L1) block, an English (L2) block, and a mixed (L1 and L2) block. Results showed that performance in the mixed block was better on both congruent and incongruent flanker trials when compared with the L1 and L2 blocks, indicating better monitoring functions overall. In Experiments 3 and 4 (reading comprehension and listening comprehension, respectively), participants were also exposed to three language contexts (i.e., L1, L2, and mixed block) but performed a non-conflict control task that did not require any conflict resolution. The results of Experiments 3 and 4 showed similar performance under the three different language contexts. Taken together, these results indicate that language control mechanisms involved in bilingual comprehension contribute to domain-general executive control performance. The results suggest a monitoring mechanism establishes a bridge connecting executive functions and bilingual language control during comprehension.

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the distributive effect when producing subject-verb agreement in English as a second language (L2) when the participant's first language either does or does not require subject-verb agreement. Both Chinese-English and Uygur-English bilinguals were included in Experiment 1. Chinese has no required subject-verb agreement, whereas Uygur does. Results showed that the distributive effect was observed in Uygur-English bilinguals but not in Chinese-English bilinguals, indicating that this particular first language (L1) syntactic feature is one significant factor affecting the distributive effect in the production of subject-verb agreement in L2. Experiment 2 further investigated the matter by choosing Chinese-English participants with higher L2 proficiency. Still, no distributive effect was observed, suggesting that the absence of distributive effect in Chinese-English bilinguals in Experiment 1 was not due to low proficiency in the target language. Experiment 3 changed the way the stimuli were presented, highlighting the singular or distributive nature of the subject noun phrases, and the distributive effect was observed in Chinese-English bilinguals. Altogether, the results show that the L1 syntactic feature of subject-verb agreement is one significant factor affecting the distributive effect in the production of subject-verb agreement in L2. More specifically, distributive effects rarely occur in L2 when L1 has no requirement on subject-verb agreement, whereas distributive effects are more likely to occur in L2 when the L1 also has required subject-verb agreement.

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Aims: The present study adopted the electroencephalogram (EEG) technique to investigate whether inhibition advantage could modulate different language switches, regardless of the time spent on second language learning. Design: The inhibitory control (IC) ability of 80 low-proficient Chinese (L1)-English (L2) bilinguals was assessed by the Simon task. Half of these bilinguals were then subdivided into 20 high- and 20 low-IC participants to perform switching between L1 and L2 (L1–L2 switching), and the other half were subdivided into 20 high- and 20 low-IC participants to conduct switching between L1 and Lnew (L1–Lnew switching). All participants were required to name pictures (picture naming task) in their L1 and L2/Lnew in language switching task. Data and analysis: Both response latencies and EEG data were obtained, and then evoked and induced oscillations were calculated using time–frequency analysis. Findings: The results of language switching showed similar naming latencies for L1 and L2/Lnew switch trials in the high-IC group, whereas the low-IC group showed larger naming latencies for L1 switch trials than L2/Lnew switch trials. In contrast, the high-IC group exhibited larger theta evoked and induced power for L2/Lnew switch trials than L1 switch trials at the lexical selection level, whereas the low-IC group did not. These findings indicate that inhibition advantage helps the high-IC group to suppress effectively the non-target word via recruiting bottom-up (evoked oscillation) and top-down (induced oscillation) processes. Innovation: The present study was a first attempt to provide evidence that theta oscillation indicates cross-language interference at the lexical selection level. Significance: Inhibition plays a modulatory role in language switching, which is independent of the time spent on second language learning, and such role involves bottom-up (i.e., evoked oscillation) and top-down (i.e., induced oscillation) processes which were mainly evident at the lexical selection level.

Aims: The present study investigated whether bilinguals differing in L2 proficiency are different in their non-native phonetic perception mechanism. Methodology: An event-related potential (ERP) experiment was conducted, in which high and low L2 proficiency bilinguals were asked to focus their attention on a muted film while listening pre-attentively to phoneme contrasts arranged in the Oddball paradigm. Non-native and native phonetic conditions were investigated in two separate blocks. Data and analysis: The mean amplitudes of the ERP epochs time-locked to the onset of phonemes were analyzed within four consecutive time windows: 50–150 ms, 150–250 ms, 250–350 ms, and 350–600 ms. Repeated measures analyses were performed on the following factors: phonetic condition (non-native vs. native) × deviancy (standard vs. deviant) × brain region (frontal vs. parietal) × proficiency (high vs. low). Phonetic condition, deviancy, and brain region were within-subjects factors, whereas proficiency was a between-subjects factor. Findings: In the non-native phonetic condition, a deviancy effect in the form of mismatch negativity (MMN) and late discriminative negativity (LDN) ERP components was observed in bilinguals with high L2 proficiency, whereas the P3b and late positive component (LPC) were found in those with low L2 proficiency. In the native phonetic condition, the two proficiency groups were the same in the deviancy effect as manifested by their similar brain responses in the form of the MMN component. Originality: This was the first study to take native phonetic condition into consideration while investigating the relationship between L2 proficiency and non-native phonetic discrimination. Significance/implications: The current findings suggest that high L2 proficiency might be related to faster involuntary phonetic discrimination and efficient high-level phonetic evaluation, whereas low L2 proficiency bilinguals may need to rely on additional memory processing. Findings of this study provide more evidence for the perceptual plasticity in pre-attentive non-native phonetic processing as a function of L2 proficiency.

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Objectives/research questions: The present study focused on the performance of Chinese learners of English to investigate the activation of morpho-semantic information in the early processing of second language (L2) morphologically complex words when participants' first language (L1) and L2 are typologically different. Methodology: We used forward masked priming paradigm to compare the priming effect in three prime conditions, semantically transparent, semantically opaque and semantically related. In Experiment 1, the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was 40 milliseconds (ms), while, In Experiment 2, the SOA was extended to 80 ms. Data and analysis: Reaction time and comprehension accuracy data were analysed using the linear mixed-effects model. Findings/conclusions: In Experiment 1, we only found a priming effect in the semantically transparent condition. In Experiment 2, we found a reliable priming effect in the semantically opaque condition, but not in the semantically related condition. These results suggest even Chinese learners of English whose native language is typologically different from English can