Alicia Luque

Nebrija Universidad · Department of Applied Language Studies

In the past 20 years, the field of bilingualism has made a substantial effort to better understand the set of cognitive mechanisms that allow bilinguals to functionally manage and use their lan- guages. Among the mechanisms that have been identified, cognitive control has been posited to be key for proficient bilingual language processing and use....

In this article, we discuss the perceptions of researchers who work on heritage language bilingualism (HLB), educators who teach heritage speakers (HSs), and, crucially, HSs themselves regarding the nature of bilingualism in general as well as HLB specifically. Despite the fact that all groups are invested in HLB and that researchers and educators...

Objective: Bilingual experiences are diverse, vibrant, and multidimensional. Yet, prior research has often homogenized bilingualism and based outcomes upon monolingual norms. Framing monolinguals as the norm distorts the reality of bilingual experiences. To promote a more diverse and inclusive study of bilingualism, we propose a theoretical and me...

In this exploratory study, we considered the method of combining event‐related potentials (ERPs) and source attributions as a means for examining the explicit or implicit nature of second language (L2) knowledge and processing. We recorded electroencephalograms while L2 Spanish participants judged phrase structure and subject‐verb agreement sentenc...

Herein, we contextualize, problematize, and offer some insights for moving beyond the problem of monolingual comparative normativity in (psycho) linguistic research on bilin-gualism. We argue that, in the vast majority of cases, juxtaposing (functional) monolin-guals to bilinguals fails to offer what the comparison is supposedly intended to do: mee...

The earliest investigations of the neural implementation of language started with examining patients with various types of disorders and underlying brain damage [...]

The present study investigated the qualitative nature of grammatical gender knowledge and processing in heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish living in the United States. Forty-four adult Spanish HS bilinguals participated, completing a behavioral grammatical gender assignment task and a grammaticality judgment task (GJT) while their brain activity wa...

Single-route models of morphosyntax posit that inflected word processing involves associative memory-based storage, whereas dual-route models propose rule-governed composition as an alternative to storage-based mechanisms. We test these accounts via their divergent predictions on whether word frequency affects processing of regular morphosyntactic...

This study sought to investigate the psychological network structure of adult Spanish heritage language (HL) learners’ motivational profile by considering interconnections among the following variables: the possible HL selves, family influence, intended HL learning effort, HL achievement goal orientations, HL enjoyment, HL anxiety, perceived classr...

Understanding what traits facilitate second language (L2) learning has been the focus of many psycholinguistic studies for the last thirty years. One source of insight comes from quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG), i.e., electrical brain activity recorded from the scalp. Using qEEG, Prat et al. [1] found that functional brain connectivity i...

The study of individual differences (IDs) in language processing using event-related potentials (ERPs) has become more prominent in recent years. However, we have not yet reached a full understanding of variability in ERP correlates of first (L1) or second (L2) language processing; and methodologically, how we capture those IDs is still a matter of...

This study examines potential changes to L1 (Brazilian Portuguese, BP) perception of phonotactic structure as a function of L2 (English) experience. Syllables with a coda stop violate syllable structure constraints in BP, but are licit in English. As a result, BP monolinguals perceive an illusory /i/ after an illicit coda (e.g., ob/i/ter ‘to obtain...

This study examines potential changes to L1 (Brazilian Portuguese, BP) perception of phonotactic structure as a function of L2 (English) experience. Syllables with a coda stop violate syllable structure constraints in BP, but are licit in English. As a result, BP monolinguals perceive an illusory /i/ after an illicit coda (e.g., ob/i/ter 'to obtain...

A critical question about bilingualism is how two or more languages are processed in the bilingual mind (e.g., Kroll, Bobb, & Hoshino, 2014). Previous research shows that bilinguals’ languages interact, at least at the lexical and phonological levels. Relatively little research has addressed whether this occurs at the syntactic level during sentenc...