About us: Jens Roeser

  • associate professor in psycholinguistics @ psychology department (Nottingham Trent University)
  • Language processing with focus on writing (Roeser, Torrance, and Baguley 2019) and understudied languages (Garcia, Roeser, and Kidd 2023).
  • Bayesian modelling (Roeser et al. 2021, 2025); keystroke logging; eye tracking
  • \(>\) 10 years of experience teaching data science and statistics to UG, PG students, academics and professionals (psyntur, Andrews and Roeser 2021); cognitive psychology and language acquisition (Roeser and Wood 2019)

About us: Mark Torrance

  • 30+ years of research on how people write
  • Educational research – how can we change classroom teaching to better support writing development
  • Cognitive psychology research – what happens in our minds when we write letters, words, sentences
  • Wrote the Psychology Project marking criteria, so knows what a good Project looks like

The B&B Lab

  • Half of the world’s population (~43% with ~36% in the UK) speaks at least two languages.
  • Majority of language and literacy research has focused just on monolinguals; primarily “western” languages.
    • How is it that bilinguals can switch off one of their languages when they are talking in the other?
    • Why do bilinguals only rarely mix up words?
    • How do people who can write in two languages manage spelling?
    • What difference does it make that languages use different scripts (English, Arabic, Hindi)?
    • How does the grammar of one language influence how we form utterances in the other?
    • Generally, do findings from research on monolinguals generalise to bilinguals, multi-lingual communities, understudied languages?
  • These questions address basic processes about how our minds understand and produce language.

Bilingualism

Generally refers to the ability to use two languages.

Exact definition depends on the perspective:

  • Common use: A bilingual person can communicate in two languages to some degree, regardless of proficiency.
  • Linguistics/psycholinguistics: Bilingualism is often defined as the regular use of two (or more) languages in daily life. This does not require native-like fluency in both.
  • Sociolinguistic perspective: Bilingualism can also describe a community or society where two languages are used.
  • Continuum view: Bilingualism is seen as a spectrum, ranging from receptive bilinguals (who understand a second language but don’t speak it well) to balanced bilinguals (who use both languages with similar proficiency).

Bilingualism

Age of Acquisition

  • Simultaneous Bilinguals: Acquire two (or more) languages from birth or before age 3.
  • Sequential / Successive Bilinguals: Learn a second language after the first is established (typically after age 3).

Proficiency and Dominance

  • Balanced Bilinguals: Have roughly equal proficiency in both languages.
  • Dominant Bilinguals: Are more proficient in one language than the other.
  • Receptive Bilinguals: Understand a second language but do not speak it fluently.

Context of Acquisition

  • Naturalistic Bilinguals: Acquire both languages through immersion in natural settings (e.g., home, community).
  • Instructed Bilinguals: Learn a second language primarily through formal education.

Functional Use

  • Additive Bilinguals: Learn a second language without losing proficiency in the first.
  • Subtractive Bilinguals: Learning a second language leads to attrition or loss of the first language.
  • Elective Bilinguals: Choose to learn a second language (often for personal or professional reasons).
  • Circumstantial Bilinguals: Learn a second language out of necessity (e.g., migration).

Language Systems

  • Compound Bilinguals: Develop both languages in the same context, leading to a single conceptual system.
  • Coordinate Bilinguals: Learn each language in different contexts, leading to two separate conceptual systems.
  • Subordinate Bilinguals: Learn a second language by filtering it through the first language.

Literacy and Modality

  • Biscriptuals: Can read and write in two different scripts (e.g., Latin and Cyrillic).
  • Bimodal Bilinguals: Use two languages in different modalities (e.g., spoken language and sign language).

Sociolinguistic Status

  • Elite Bilinguals: associated with high social status.
  • Folk Bilinguals: associated with minority or marginalised groups.

Biscriptuality

Is less commonly discussed than bilingualism, but it parallels the idea: The ability to read and/or write in more than one script (writing system).

For example, someone who can read and write both

  • in Latin script (English, Spanish, German) and Cyrillic script (Russian, Bulgarian).
  • simplified Chinese characters and traditional Chinese characters.
  • Hindi–Urdu speaker who can handle Devanagari and Perso-Arabic scripts.

Scope: Like bilingualism, biscriptuality can be thought of as a continuum—from basic recognition in a second script to full literacy and productive use across domains.

Distinction from bilingualism: Biscriptuality is specifically about writing systems, which may (but don’t have to) correspond to different languages. For instance, Serbian can be written in both Cyrillic and Latin, so one could be monolingual but biscriptual.

Lab rules!

  • Do the tasks we set, when we set them.
  • Ask for help when you need it – don’t wait until you are behind.
  • Always use Teams (unless personal)
  • Do: “I’ve been reading / thinking / trying this… but I’m confused about… I’m thinking it could be this… but I need your input…”
  • Don’t: “Tell me what to do…”
  • Be at Lab meetings.

Summary: Projects need steady work, starting now. Like a job. We will help you but we won’t do the thinking / work for you, and you have to ask.

Dates Topic Homework for next session Deadlines
TERM 1
23th September Introduction Read relevant papers assigned by Lab Leaders. Identify the topic of interest and begin to develop research questions.
7th October Rationale and research questions Upload a 250-word rationale to Teams channel.
21st October Study design & ethics Before 30th October, complete draft of ethics form and send to supervisor for feedback.
4th November The Introduction Upload an outline of your introduction to Teams channel.
18th November Implementing your study Complete the implementation of your study and once you received ethics approval and approval by your supervisor start collecting. Am to complete data collection before start of term 2. 21st November 2025 – ethics submission
TERM 2
13th January Methods writing and planning analysis Submit a Design section to Teams.
27th January Data wrangling and inferential analysis Complete your data analysis and draft your results section.
10th February Discuss the individual sections of the report and what is needed in each section for the assessment. Finish write-up of analysis and develop a plan for the discussion section.
23rd February Overview of all sections of the projects and feedback Finalise project draft 9th March 2026 – draft deadline
10th March Wrap-up Work on implementing feedback into project 2nd April – supervision ends
16th April, 2 pm – submission deadline 

Your turn!

What does a bilingual writer need to do mentally to be able to type the name of the object below?




Bring these in the right order:

  1. Find the language sounds for the word, i.e. /b/, /a/, /g/, /p/, \(\dots\)
  2. Find the letters matching the language sounds <b>, <a>, <g>, <p>, \(\dots\)
  3. Move finger towards the <b> key and press it.
  4. Find the name of the depicted object: “bagpipes”
  5. Identify what the picture shows: squeaky musical instrument, has to do with Scotland
  6. Decide for a language you’re going to use: e.g. English
  7. Move eyes to picture: gaze moves away from text and towards the picture

Topic 1: Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Priming

Research Question: Does orthography enhance syntactic priming effects in bilinguals?

Description: Syntactic priming refers to the tendency to reuse syntactic structures recently encountered. This effect is stronger when surface features (e.g., verb or noun similarity) are shared. This topic explores whether orthographic similarity across languages modulates cross-linguistic syntactic priming.

Suggested Paradigms

  • Sentence completion
  • Translation tasks
  • Priming with cognates and truncated passives

Recommended Reading

  • Nielsen and Christiansen (2025)
  • Garcia et al. (2025)

Topic 2: Cognate Facilitation

  • Monolinguals store words in and retrieve words from from their “mental lexicon”.
  • People can use and recognise words because they exist in their lexicon.
  • How is the mental lexicon of bilinguals organised?
  • Are mental representations shared across languages (one lexicon) vs separated by language (two lexicons)?
  • Like, how does a bilingual know a word corresponds to language A or B?
Graphic taken from @Wilshire2008; broadly similar to @levelt1999theory.

Graphic taken from Wilshire (2008); broadly similar to Levelt, Roelofs, and Meyer (1999).

Topic 2 and 3: Cognates

What’s a cognate?

Words that share both form and meaning across languages:

  • “computer” is a cognate for a few languages (e.g. German: “der Computer”); in contrast to e.g. “the chair” vs “der Stuhl”.

Cognates are interesting cases to test to what extent mental representations of words are co-activated and interact in the mind.

Topic 2: Cognate Facilitation

Cognates are processed more efficiently by bilinguals.

  • early vocabulary development (Mitchell, Tsui, and Byers-Heinlein 2024)
  • naming pictures (Sadat et al. 2016; Muylle, Van Assche, and Hartsuiker 2022; Broersma, Carter, and Acheson 2016)
  • easier in reading (Tiffin-Richards 2024; Van Assche et al. 2009)
  • word recognition (Vanlangendonck et al. 2020; Peeters, Dijkstra, and Grainger 2013; Zhang et al. 2019)
  • quicker writing from dictation (Iniesta et al. 2021)
  • quicker response for translation but slow spelling (Muscalu and Smiley 2019)

Research Question: To what extent do cognates facilitate responses in writing?

Topic 2: Cognate Facilitation

Why is it interesting to study cognates in writing?

  • Below are data from 30 Hindi-speaking children (with English as second language).
  • Children were asked to name pictures of cognates (e.g. “computer”) and non-cognates (e.g. “chair”) using phonetic spelling.
  • We (i.e. a PG student I supervised) found more spelling alternatives for cognates.
  • Does this reflect uncertainty in mental word form? Does English knowledge interfere?
Response for picture of a “computer” n children Response for picture of a “chair” n children
computer 8 kursi 15
kampootar 3 kursee 8
kumputer 3 kurse 2
kampotar 2 kurashi 1
kumputar 2 kurcee 1
camputar 1 kurshi 1
camputer 1 kursie 1
chanpytur 1 kursii 1
compootar 1
cumpotr 1
kamptar 1
kamputer 1
kanyptur 1
kumpetar 1
kumpter 1
kumpyutar 1
kunputar 1

Topic 3: Lexical Retrieval and Familiarity

Description:

  • Bilinguals often find it easier to name culturally specific concepts in one language than the other.
  • This topic investigates whether naming latency (i.e., how quickly a word is produced) is influenced by how familiar a concept is in the bilingual’s second language—even when the concept is also known in their dominant language.

Research Question: Does familiarity with a word in a second language predict naming speed in a dominant language after controlling for familiarity in the dominant language?

For example:

  • A bilingual English–Hindi speaker might name “rickshaw” faster in Hindi than in English, even though they know the word in both languages, because the concept is more culturally embedded in Hindi.
  • A bilingual English–German speaker might name “Bratwurst” faster in German than in English, due to higher exposure and cultural relevance.
  • A bilingual might struggle to name “Thanksgiving” in their non-dominant language if the concept is unfamiliar or culturally specific to English.

Example

Familiarity ratings using AI (Brysbaert, Martínez, and Reviriego 2024)

Complete the following tasks as a native English speaker. Familiarity is a measure of how familiar something is. A word is very FAMILIAR if you see/hear it often and it is easily recognizable. In contrast, a word is very UNFAMILIAR if you rarely see/hear it and it is relatively unrecognizable. Please indicate how familiar you think each word is on a scale from 1 (VERY UNFAMILIAR) to 7 (VERY FAMILIAR), with the midpoint representing moderate familiarity. The word is: Bratwurst. Only answer a number from 1 to 7. Please limit your answer to numbers.

Score: 5


Complete the following tasks as a native German speaker. Familiarity is a measure of how familiar something is. A word is very FAMILIAR if you see/hear it often and it is easily recognizable. In contrast, a word is very UNFAMILIAR if you rarely see/hear it and it is relatively unrecognizable. Please indicate how familiar you think each word is on a scale from 1 (VERY UNFAMILIAR) to 7 (VERY FAMILIAR), with the midpoint representing moderate familiarity. The word is: Bratwurst. Only answer a number from 1 to 7. Please limit your answer to numbers.

Score: 7

Topic 2 and 3: Design suggestions

  • Written picture-naming tasks
  • Word-copying task with phonetic transcription from Arabic, Hindi, Cyrillic, Chinese to English
  • Translation task
  • Manipulation: prime / distractor words, picture familiarity, familiarisation task, cognates / non-cognates (word-form similarity), output language, culturally biased / unbiased words, language proficiency
  • Outcome variables: response speed, duration, accuracy, spelling
  • Culturarlly specific word familiarity scores: see Brysbaert, Martínez, and Reviriego (2024)
  • Images can be created using Adobe FireFly

Topic 2 and 3: Recommended Reading

More general reading recommendations

  • Review on bilingual language processing: Schwartz and Kroll (2006), Kroll and Gollan (2014), Runnqvist, Strijkers, and Costa (2014)
  • Review on language production: Wheeldon and Konopka (2023), Slevc (2022), Ferreira and Engelhardt (2006), Bock and Ferreira (2014)
  • Models of writing: Introduction of Roeser et al. (2025), Kandel (2023)

Your projects: What now?

  • Decide for a research question.
  • Explore the topic:
    • In pairs use co-pilot to find out as much as you can about one of our suggested topics.
    • If not co-pilot, create a ChatGPT account chat.openai.com/
    • Find Teams channel and post a message saying hello and post something you found out from your Gen AI search.
  • Until next session, read the recommended papers for your research question (see NOW learning room).
  • Make notes to explain your research question.

References

Andrews, Mark, and Jens Roeser. 2021. psyntur: Helper Tools for Teaching Statistical Data Analysis. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=psyntur.

Assche, E. van, M. Brysbaert, and W. Duyck. 2020. “Bilingual Lexical Access.” In Bilingual Lexical Ambiguity Resolution, edited by R. R. Heredia and A. B. Cieślicka, 42–68. Cambridge University Press.

Bock, J. Kathryn, and Victor S. Ferreira. 2014. “Syntactically Speaking.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Production, edited by Matthew Goldrick, Victor S. Ferreira, and Michele Miozzo, 21–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Broersma, M., D. Carter, and D. J. Acheson. 2016. “Cognate Costs in Bilingual Speech Production: Evidence from Language Switching.” Frontiers in Psychology 7: 1461. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01461.

Brysbaert, Marc, Gonzalo Martínez, and Pedro Reviriego. 2024. “Moving Beyond Word Frequency Based on Tally Counting: AI-Generated Familiarity Estimates of Words and Phrases Are an Interesting Additional Index of Language Knowledge.” Behavior Research Methods 57 (1): 28. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02561-7.

Ferreira, Fernanda, and Paul E. Engelhardt. 2006. “Syntax and Production.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, edited by Matthew Traxler and Morton Ann Gernsbacher, 2:61–91. Elsevier.

Garcia, Rowena, Jens Roeser, and Evan Kidd. 2023. “Finding Your Voice: Voice-Specific Effects in Tagalog Reveal the Limits of Word Order Priming.” Cognition 236: 105424.

Garcia, Rowena, Jens Roeser, Janina Camille Vargas, Saffanah Fathin, and Evan Kidd. 2025. “Teasing Apart the Impact of Different Forms of Overlap on Crosslinguistic Structural Priming.” Language, Cognition and Neuroscience XX (XX): XX–. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2025.2558640.

Iniesta, A., D. Paolieri, F. Serrano, and M. T. Bajo. 2021. “Bilingual Writing Coactivation: Lexical and Sublexical Processing in a Word Dictation Task.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 24: 902–17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000274.

Kandel, Sonia. 2023. “Written Production: The APOMI Model of Word Writing: Anticipatory Processing of Orthographic and Motor Information.” In Language Production, edited by Robert J. Hartsuiker and Kristof Strijkers, 1st ed., 209–32. London: Routledge.

Kroll, Judith F., and Tamar H. Gollan. 2014. “Speech Planning in Two Languages: What Bilinguals Tell Us about Language Production.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Production, edited by Matthew Goldrick, Victor Ferreira, and Michele Miozzo, 165–81. Oxford University Press.

Levelt, Willem JM, Ardi Roelofs, and Antje S Meyer. 1999. “A Theory of Lexical Access in Speech Production.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (1): 1–38.

Mitchell, Lauren, Rebecca K.-Y. Tsui, and Krista Byers-Heinlein. 2024. “Cognates Are Advantaged over Non-Cognates in Early Bilingual Expressive Vocabulary Development.” Journal of Child Language 51: 596–615. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000923000648.

Muscalu, Laura M., and Patricia A. Smiley. 2019. “The Illusory Benefit of Cognates: Lexical Facilitation Followed by Sublexical Interference in a Word Typing Task.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 22 (4): 848–65.

Muylle, Merel, Eva Van Assche, and Robert J. Hartsuiker. 2022. “Comparing the Cognate Effect in Spoken and Written Second Language Word Production.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 25 (1): 93–107.

Nielsen, Yngwie A., and Morten H. Christiansen. 2025. “Context, Not Grammar, Is Key to Structural Priming.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 29 (8): 703–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.05.016.

Peeters, D., T. Dijkstra, and J. Grainger. 2013. “The Representation and Processing of Identical Cognates by Late Bilinguals: RT and ERP Effects.” Journal of Memory and Language 68 (4): 315–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2012.12.003.

Roembke, T. C., I. Koch, and A. M. Philipp. 2024. “What Makes a Cognate? Implications for Research on Bilingualism.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728924000233.

Roeser, Jens, Rianne Conijn, E. Chukharev, G. H. Ofstad, and Mark Torrance. 2025. “Typing in Tandem: Language Planning in Multisentence Text Production Is Fundamentally Parallel.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 154 (7): 1824–54. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001759.

Roeser, Jens, Sven De Maeyer, Mariëlle Leijten, and Luuk Van Waes. 2021. “Modelling Typing Disfluencies as Finite Mixture Process.” Reading and Writing, 1–26.

Roeser, Jens, Mark Torrance, and Thom Baguley. 2019. “Advance Planning in Written and Spoken Sentence Production.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 45 (11): 1983–2009.

Roeser, Jens, and Clare Wood. 2019. “Language and Literacy.” In Essential Psychology, edited by P. Banyard, C. Norman, G. Dillon, and B. Winder, 3:197–226. London: Sage.

Runnqvist, Elin, Kristof Strijkers, and Albert Costa. 2014. “Bilingual Word Access.” In The Oxford Handbook of Language Production, edited by Matthew Goldrick, Victor Ferreira, and Michele Miozzo, 182–98. Oxford University Press.

Sadat, Jasmin, Clara D. Martin, James S. Magnuson, François-Xavier Alario, and Albert Costa. 2016. “Breaking down the Bilingual Cost in Speech Production.” Cognitive Science 40 (8): 1911–40. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12315.

Schwartz, Ana I., and Judith F. Kroll. 2006. “Language Processing in Bilingual Speakers.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, 967–99. Elsevier.

Slevc, L. Robert. 2022. “Grammatical Encoding.” In Current Issues in the Psychology of Language, edited by R. Hartsuiker and K. Strijkers, 455–503. Routledge Press (Taylor & Francis), UK. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/a4vxm.

Tiffin-Richards, Susan P. 2024. “Cognate Facilitation in Bilingual Reading: The Influence of Orthographic and Phonological Similarity on Lexical Decisions and Eye-Movements.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728923000949.

Van Assche, E., W. Duyck, R. J. Hartsuiker, and K. Diependaele. 2009. “Does Bilingualism Change Native-Language Reading? Cognate Effects in a Sentence Context.” Psychological Science 20 (8): 923–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02389.x.

Vanlangendonck, Flora, David Peeters, Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer, and Ton Dijkstra. 2020. “Mixing the Stimulus List in Bilingual Lexical Decision Turns Cognate Facilitation Effects into Mirrored Inhibition Effects.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 23 (4): 836–44. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000531.

Wheeldon, Linda Ruth, and Agnieszka Konopka. 2023. Grammatical Encoding for Speech Production. Elements in Psycholinguistics. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009264518.

Wilshire, Caroline E. 2008. “Cognitive Neuropsychological Approaches to Word Production in Aphasia: Beyond Boxes and Arrows.” Aphasiology 22 (10): 1019–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/02687030701536016.

Zhang, Juan, Chenggang Wu, Tiemin Zhou, and Yaxuan Meng. 2019. “Cognate Facilitation Priming Effect Is Modulated by Writing System: Evidence from Chinese-English Bilinguals.” International Journal of Bilingualism 23 (2): 553–66.