Overview
This research tests whether bilingual experience changes how listeners and speakers adapt to new statistical patterns in speech. A central goal is to identify when bilingualism supports flexibility in adaptation and how those effects depend on how language experience is measured and modeled.
Active Workstreams
- Comparing categorical and continuous definitions of bilingual experience.
- Linking language history to adaptation and cognitive-control performance.
- Using shared paradigms to compare bilingual and monolingual participant groups.
Methods
- Language-history profiling with structured proficiency and dominance measures.
- Behavioral adaptation tasks and cognitive-control batteries.
- Integration with EEG and acoustic analyses in cross-cluster projects.
- Modeling effects of proficiency, dominance, and usage patterns.
Key Questions
- When does bilingual experience increase adaptation flexibility?
- Which dimensions of bilingualism best predict adaptation outcomes?
- How do cognitive-control differences mediate adaptation across participants?
Funding and Grants
- 2025: Donnelly, C. (VURF). "Using Structural Equation Modelling to Understand the Relationship Between Bilingualism and Cognitive Control."
- 2024: Donnelly, C. (VURF). "The Role of Classification of Bilingualism in Influencing Apparent Performance on Cognitive Control Tasks."
Project Snapshot
- Clusters: Cognition and Community
- Population: adult monolingual and bilingual participants
- Primary outcomes: adaptation rates, cognitive-control metrics, discrimination sensitivity
- Recent output window: 1 conference presentation (2025)
Current Data (2024-2026)
- 2025: "Attenuated native language phoneme discrimination in bilinguals" presented at ISB 15 (Donostia/San Sebastian).
- 2025: VURF project on structural equation modeling of bilingualism and cognitive control.
- 2024: VURF project on classification effects in bilingualism and cognitive-control findings.
Last Updated
February 2026