Jason Gullifer

• McGill University

In this contribution in honor of Dr. Judith Kroll, we review behavioral models of bilingualism, bringing the most important examples from the literature to highlight how Judy's work has shaped the field. In the second part of the contribution, we describe the challenges and opportunities of neuroimaging methods applied to bilingualism, and we discu...

We affirm the utility of integrative modeling, according to which it is advantageous to move beyond “one-at-a-time binary paradigms” through studies that position themselves within realistic multidimensional design spaces. We extend the integrative modeling approach to a target domain with which we are familiar, the consequences of bilingualism on...

Purpose: People are shaped holistically by dynamic and interrelated individual and social-ecological systems. This perspective has been discussed in the context of varied aspects of bilingual experiences, namely language acquisition and development. Here, we applied a Systems Framework of Bilingualism to language attitudes, which may be especially...

We used machine-learning techniques to assess interactions between language and cognitive systems related to inhibitory control and conflict adaptation in reactive control tasks. We built theoretically driven candidate models of Simon and Number Stroop task data ( N = 777 adult bilinguals ages 18–43 years living in Montréal, Canada) that differed i...

Idioms are semantically non-compositional multiword units whose meanings often go beyond literal interpretations of their component words (e.g., break the ice, kick the bucket, spill the beans). According to hybrid models of idiom processing, idioms are subject to both direct retrieval from the lexicon in early stages of processing, and word-by-wor...

Socioecological approaches to communication consider people’s language behaviors as nested within multilevel sociocultural systems. In contrast, psycholinguistic approaches consider people’s language behaviors as a collection of person-specific experiences and capacities (Itzhak et al., 2017). Both approaches are relevant to understanding real-worl...

Human cognition occurs within social contexts, and nowhere is this more evident than language behavior. Regularly using multiple languages is a globally ubiquitous individual experience that is shaped by social environmental forces, ranging from interpersonal interactions to ambient language exposure. Here, we develop a Systems Framework of Bilingu...

Bilinguals juggle knowledge of multiple languages, including syntactic constructions that can mismatch (e.g., the red car, la voiture rouge; Mary sees it, Mary le voit). We used eye-tracking to examine whether French-English (n = 23) and English-French (n = 21) bilingual adults activate non-target language syntax during English L2 (Experiment 1) an...

Bilinguals have distinct linguistic experiences relative to monolinguals, stemming from interactions with the environment and individuals therein. Theories of language control hypothesize that these experiences play a role in adapting the neurocognitive systems responsible for control. Here we posit a potential mechanism for these adaptations, name...

Despite the multifactorial space of language experience in which people continuously vary, bilinguals are often dichotomized into ostensibly homogeneous groups. The timing of language exposure (age of acquisition) to a second language (L2) is one well-studied construct that is known to impact language processing, cognitive processing, and brain org...

Recent work within the language sciences, particularly bilingualism, has sought new methods to evaluate and characterize how people differentially use language across different communicative contexts. These differences have thus far been linked to changes in cognitive control strategy, reading behavior, and brain organization. Here, we approach thi...

We used insights from machine learning to address an important but contentious question: Is bilingual language experience associated with executive control abilities? Specifically, we assess proactive executive control for over 400 young adult bilinguals via reaction time (RT) on an AX continuous performance task (AX-CPT). We measured bilingual exp...

Despite the multifactorial space of language experience in which people continuously vary, bilinguals are often dichotomized into ostensibly homogeneous groups. The timing of language exposure (age of acquisition; AoA) to a second language (L2) is one well-studied construct that is known to impact language processing, cognitive processing, and brai...

We used insights from machine learning to address an important but contentious question: is bilingual language experience associated with executive control abilities? Specifically, we assess proactive executive control for over 400 young adult bilinguals via reaction time on an AX continuous performance task (AX-CPT). We measured bilingual experien...

Recent work within the language sciences, particularly bilingualism, has sought new methods to evaluate and characterize how people differentially use language across different communicative contexts. These differences have thus far been linked to changes in cognitive control strategy, reading behavior, and brain organization. Here, we approach thi...

We investigated whether bilingual older adults experience within- and cross-language competition during spoken word recognition similarly to younger adults matched on age of second language (L2) acquisition, objective and subjective L2 proficiency, and current L2 exposure. In a visual world eye-tracking paradigm, older and younger adults, who were...

We investigated whether bilingual older adults experience within- and cross-language competition during spoken word recognition similarly to younger adults matched on age of second language (L2) acquisition, objective and subjective L2 proficiency, and current L2 exposure. In a visual world eye-tracking paradigm, older and younger adults, who were...

We investigated whether cross-language activation is sensitive to shifting language demands and language experience during first and second language (i.e., L1, L2) reading. Experiment 1 consisted of L1 French-L2 English bilinguals reading in the L2, and Experiment 2 consisted of L1 English-L2 French bilinguals reading in the L1. Both groups read En...

Bilingual and multilingual individuals exhibit variation in everyday language experience. Studies on bilingualism account for individual differences with measures such as L2 age of acquisition, exposure, or language proficiency, but recent theoretical perspectives posit that the relative balance between the two or more languages throughout daily li...

We investigated whether cross-language activation is sensitive to shifting language demands and language experience during first and second language (i.e., L1, L2) reading. Experiment 1 consisted of L1 French – L2 English bilinguals reading in the L2, and Experiment 2 consisted of L1 English - L2 French bilinguals reading in the L1. Both groups rea...

Bilingual and multilingual individuals exhibit variation in everyday language experience. Studies on bilingualism account for individual differences with measures such as L2 age of acquisition, exposure, or language proficiency, but recent theoretical perspectives posit that the relative balance between the two or more languages throughout daily li...

We investigated the independent contributions of second language (L2) age of acquisition (AoA) and social diversity of language use on intrinsic brain organization using seed-based resting-state functional connectivity among highly proficient French-English bilinguals. There were two key findings. First, earlier L2 AoA related to greater interhemis...

We investigated the independent contributions of second language (L2) age of acquisition (AoA) and social diversity of language use on intrinsic brain organization using seed-based resting-state functional connectivity among highly proficient French-English bilinguals. There were two key findings. First, earlier L2 AoA related to greater interhemis...

In daily life, we experience dynamic visual input referred to as the “linguistic landscape” (LL), comprised of images and text, for example, signs, and billboards (Gorter, 2013; Landry & Bourhis, 1997; Shohamy, Ben-Rafael and Barni 2010). While much is known about LLs descriptively, less is known about what people notice when viewing LLs. Building...

This collection brings together two areas of research that are currently receiving great attention in both scientific and public spheres: cognitive aging and bilingualism. With ongoing media focus on the aging population and the need for activities to forestall cognitive decline, experiences that appear effective in maintaining functioning are of g...

We report two experiments that investigate the effects of sentence context on bilingual lexical access in Spanish and English. Highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences in Spanish and English that included a marked word to be named. The word was either a cognate with similar orthography and/or phonology in the two languages, or a...

Recent studies have shown that when bilinguals or multilinguals read written words, listen to spoken words, or plan words that they intend to speak in one language alone, information in all of the languages that they know is momentarily active. That activation produces cross-language competition that sometimes converges to facilitate performance an...

This paper investigates the processing differences between sentences containing filler-gap dependencies and sentences with a cataphoric form of ellipsis, reverse sluicing. The two structures look similar on the surface, but differ theoretically both in grammar and constr aints governing their distribution. The processing of a sluice occurs at LF wh...