http://www.communication.northwestern.edu/csd/faculty/Viorica_Marian/
The proportion of bilingual and multilingual speakers in the US is steadily increasing, while outside the US speaking more than one language is frequently the norm. My research interests focus on changes to the cognitive and linguistic architecture as a result of bilingualism. In this talk, I suggest that the bilingual system is highly interactive, with the two languages being processed in parallel. For example, we have found that when Russian-English bilinguals are told to pick up an object such as a marker, they often make eye-movements to a stamp (the Russian word for which is 'marka'), suggesting that as a word unfolds in real time, both languages are being activated. Eye-tracking studies on both spoken language comprehension and written language comprehension will be presented. Finally, I will suggest that the task demands associated with bilinguals' parallel language processing yield a bilingual difference in inhibitory control and may also influence executive control beyond linguistic processing alone. Bilingualism may therefore provide a window into general cognitive functioning and may serve as a laboratory for testing hypotheses about the human language capacity.