We investigate the 'gender-congruency' effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian-Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / 'find the scarf') and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects' name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed.

Multilingual speakers are able to switch from one language to the other ("code-switch") between or within sentences. Because the underlying cognitive mechanisms are not well understood, in this study we use computational cognitive modeling to shed light on the process of code-switching. We employed the Bilingual Dual-path model, a Recurrent Neural Network of bilingual sentence production (Tsoukala et al., 2017) and simulated sentence production in simultaneous Spanish-English bilinguals. Our first goal was to investigate whether the model would code-switch without being exposed to code-switched training input. The model indeed produced codeswitches even without any exposure to such input and the patterns of code-switches are in line with earlier linguistic work (Poplack, 1980). The second goal of this study was to investigate an auxiliary phrase asymmetry that exists in Spanish-English code-switched production. Using this cognitive model, we examined a possible cause for this asymmetry. To our knowledge, this is the first computational cognitive model that aims to simulate code-switched sentence production.

Multilingual speakers are able to switch from one language to the other ("code-switch'') between or within sentences. Because the underlying cognitive mechanisms are not well understood, in this study we use computational cognitive modeling to shed light on the process of code-switching.We employed the Bilingual Dual-path model, a Recurrent Neural Network of bilingual sentence production Tsoukala et al. (2017) and simulated sentence production in simultaneous Spanish-English bilinguals. Our first goal was to investigate whether the model would code-switch without being exposed to code-switched training input.The model indeed produced code-switches even without any exposure to such input and the patterns of code-switches are in line with earlier linguistic work Poplack (1980). The second goal of this study was to investigate an auxiliary phrase asymmetry that exists in Spanish-English code-switched production. Using this cognitive model, we examined a possible cause for this asymmetry. To our knowledge, this is the first computational cognitive model that aims to simulate code-switched sentence production.

This Special Collection includes a number of articles published together on the topic of Psycholinguistics and Variation and identified by the keyword “PsychLingVar” The collection reflects our view that variation in language processing is both important and ubiquitous, and that such variation presents challenges that psycholinguists have long ignored. In this article, we provide a brief overview of current psycholinguistic research on variation, including the articles featured in the collection. While quite diverse, this collection of articles is united by the common goal of investigating variation in language processing.

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