Lexical processing in child and adult classroom second language learners: Uniqueness and similarities, and implications for cognitive models

The Neurocognitive Underpinnings of Second Language Processing: Knowledge Gains From the Past and Future Outlook

“…More specifically, grammar processing in L1 and L2 mainly engaged frontal/basal ganglia networks that have been associated with procedural-related circuits (and no involvement of medial temporal structures more associated with declarative memory, cf. Ullman's declarative/procedural model, e.g., Ullman, 2020). Phonological processing in both L1 and L2 involved frontal regions (more widespread for L2), that is, regions that are key components of the dorsal pathway in dual-stream models of speech processing (e.g., Hickok & Poeppel, 2007;Saur et al, 2008) and that are involved in translating acoustic speech signals into articulatory representations.…”

“…Finally, grammar learning, but not lexical learning, engaged the left caudate nucleus and left anterior putamen, parts of the basal ganglia. The basal ganglia have been widely associated with procedural learning functions (e.g., Kreitzer & Malenka, 2008) that in turn have been proposed to underlie grammatical learning in Ullman's declarative/procedural model (e.g., Ullman, 2020;see Tagarelli et al, 2019, for further discussion how the meta-analysis outcomes support this model).…”

“…Despite constraints imposed by scanning equipment, efforts have been made to enhance the ecological validity of neurocognitive research, and these efforts have also entered the field of L2 learning and processing. This has included efforts to create more naturalistic stimulus materials (e.g., Alemán Bañón & Martin, 2021; Blanco‐Elorrieta & Pylkkänen, 2018), to measure brain activity in mimicked real‐life settings such as noisy environments (e.g., Rammell et al., 2019) or interactive discourse situations (e.g., Kaan et al., 2020), and to apply neurocognitive techniques in field settings or in the L2 learning classroom (Van Hell, 2020). For example, presenting English learners of L2 Spanish with Spanish and English sentences in noisy or in quiet conditions, Rammell et al.…”

Supporting the development of the bilingual lexicon through translanguaging: a realist review integrating psycholinguistics with educational sciences

“…Fears that using different languages in the classroom may confuse bilingual children seem therefore unwarranted. Furthermore, it has become clear that the two languages of bilingual children are interconnected in the brain, and that even in single-language contexts, the other language is activated and cannot be turned off selectively (for a review, see Van Hell, 2020). Taken together, these insights show that the socially and politically defined boundaries between languages do not correspond to the way in which they are processed in the brain, thus advocating against monolingual educational practices for bilingual children (Otheguy et al, 2019).…”

Eye Movement Measures of Within-Language and Cross-Language Activation During Reading in Monolingual and Bilingual Children and Adults: A Focus on Neighborhood Density Effects

“…Although no prior response-based studies have investigated orthographic neighborhood effects in bilingual children, there is evidence that their visual word recognition is differentially mediated by cross-language orthographic overlap, especially when they are younger in age (for a review, see van Hell, 2020 ). For instance, Duñabeitia et al (2016) tested a large sample ( N = 100) of balanced Spanish-Basque bilingual children (aged 8–15) on L1 and L2 translation recognition tasks and found that the younger children’s performance was more sensitive to the target words’ cognate status, with greater orthographic overlap facilitating word recognition (see also Schröter and Schroeder, 2016 , 2018 and Duñabeitia et al, 2020 , for similar findings involving similar and other aspects of cross-language orthographic processing in children during L1 and L2 lexical decision tasks).…”