Editorial: Learning a non-native language in a naturalistic environment: insights from behavioral and neuroimaging research.

Abstract

Research on bilingualism has boomed in the past two decades. The processes by which a second language is acquired and processed has been investigated via linguistic, psycholinguistic, and neurolinguistic perspectives, focusing not only on second language (L2) acquisition and processing, but also the effects it might have on cognition and brain structure and function (Bialystok et al., 2012). More recent studies have focused on the effects of experience-based factors on L2 acquisition and processing (Dussias and Pinar, 2009); for example, several studies have increasingly focused on how L2 processing is affected by the active and continuous use of L2, or immersion, whether it becomes native-like, and which language domains are particularly affected (Dussias and Sagarra, 2007; Pliatsikas and Marinis, 2013). The present E-Book is a collection of recent studies that demonstrate the effects of immersive L2 learning in lexical, phonological and morpho-syntactic processing, while at the same time discusses the potential effects of immersive non-native acquisition on the structure of the bilingual brain.