Abstract
Increasing evidence suggests that bilingualism does not, in itself, result in a particular pattern of response, revealing instead a complex and multidimensional construct that is shaped by evolutionary and ecological sources of variability. Despite growing recognition of the need for a richer characterization of bilingual speakers and of the different contexts of language use, we understand relatively little about the boundary conditions of putative “bilingualism” effects. Here, we review recent findings that demonstrate how variability in the language experiences of bilingual speakers, and also in the ability of bilingual speakers to adapt to the distinct demands of different interactional contexts, impact interactions between language use, language processing, and cognitive control processes generally. Given these findings, our position is that systematic variation in bilingual language experience gives rise to a variety of phenotypes that have different patterns of associations across language processing and cognitive outcomes. The goal of this paper is thus to illustrate how focusing on systematic variation through the identification of bilingual phenotypes can provide crucial insights into a variety of performance patterns, in a manner that has implications for previous and future research.
Highlights
Over the past decade, there has been a marked change in our understanding of bilingual language experience
A key issue is that the differences in trajectories and outcomes of bilingualism are best understood by recognizing the extent of human diversity from an evolutionary perspective (e.g., Henrich et al 2010; Mason et al 2015) and by situating sources of individual variance in the sociocultural and linguistic niche within which bilinguals act (Bak 2016; Green 2011; Raviv et al 2019; Titone and Tiv forthcoming; Wigdorowitz et al 2020)
We review recent findings that demonstrate how variability in the language experiences of bilingual speakers, and in the ability of bilingual speakers to adapt to distinct demands of different interactional contexts, impact interactions between language representation, access, and control
Summary
There has been a marked change in our understanding of bilingual language experience. An important implication for these individuals is that they can use their proven experience at maximizing language competition to reliably distinguish one language from another and predict which language will be used in a given situation This inference is supported by electrophysiological research demonstrating a modulation of an early frontal positivity (P2), an index of selective attention, in response to an unexpected language switch (e.g., Kuipers and Thierry 2010). In a series of experiments designed to test sensitivity to codeswitches as a function of interactional experience, Beatty-Martínez and Dussias (2017) found that non-codeswitching bilinguals exhibited a larger early frontal positivity when processing a codeswitch relative to a unilingual control These individuals were highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals living in Granada, Spain and whose linguistic profile and behavioral ecology closely fitted the characterization described above. We consider the interactional implications for bilinguals who habitually codeswitch, using their languages freely and interchangeably within different communicative contexts
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