Today

  • Who we are and what Babelab studies
  • Why bilingualism matters
  • How broad project ideas become testable experiments
  • Topic menu: event perception, cognates, and language-community familiarity
  • Reading recommendations, lab roadmap, deadlines, and next steps

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

Jens Roeser

Bilingualism is not one thing!

Bilingualism generally refers to the ability to use two or more languages, but bilinguals are not one homogeneous group.

Two people can both be called bilingual while differing in:

  • when they learned each language;
  • how often they use each language;
  • whether they speak, understand, read, and write each language equally well;
  • whether one language is tied to home, school, work, religion, or friends;
  • whether their languages use the same script or different scripts;
  • whether they usually keep languages separate or switch between them.
Quick reflection: If you use or have learned more than one language / dialect, what kind of bilingual are you? Think about when you learned each language, where and when you use it, and whether you speak/read/write it.

Bilingualism is not an exception!

  • UNESCO estimates that at least half of the global population uses two or more languages or dialects;
  • In the UK, roughly one in three adults report being able to hold a conversation in another language;
  • Census 2021 gives a lower-bound estimate of 4.1 million people in England and Wales who use another main language and speak English well or very well.

Sources: United Nations (2024); British Council (2016); Office for National Statistics (2022)

Other misconceptions about bilingualism

  • Bilingualism is harmful. Early research often assumed that learning or using more than one language could overload children and harm language development or cognition.
  • Bilinguals are deficient unless they are native-like in both languages. Bilingual experience varies across speaking, listening, reading, writing, dominance, age of acquisition, and context.
  • Bilinguals are two monolinguals in one mind. Languages can be partly active together, and language use changes with context, proficiency, literacy, and task demands.
  • Code-switching shows confusion. Switching and borrowing are systematic parts of bilingual language use, shaped by communicative setting, topic, interlocutor, and purpose.

Source: Schwieter (2024)

Why bilingualism matters for cognitive science

A representativeness problem

Theoretical leverage

  • Bilingualism lets us ask how one mind manages multiple languages: shared representations, cross-language activation, competition, control, attention, memory, learning, and brain plasticity.

A research gap

  • Bilingualism was historically treated as complicated, secondary, or even problematic rather than as a central case for language science (Schwieter, 2024).
  • That makes bilingual reading and writing a high-value area for new project questions.

General research problems

The big problem: bilinguals usually manage two languages fluently, but the mind has to solve several coordination problems at once.

General questions in the literature

  • How are two languages represented: shared, separate, or connected systems?
  • When do both languages become active, even if only one is needed?
  • What helps speakers choose the intended language and avoid intrusions?
  • When does experience with one language shape processing in another?
  • How do proficiency, literacy, immersion, and everyday language use change processing?
  • How do writing systems and reading direction shape word recognition, production, and event representations?

Sources: Kroll & Gollan (2014); Runnqvist et al. (2014); Van Gompel & Arai (2018); Schwieter (2024)

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).

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.

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.

From broad question to experiment

The lab is about cognitive language processing: hidden processes inferred from controlled behaviour.

Broad question

Do bilinguals activate both languages when only one is needed?

Experimental version

Do bilinguals respond faster to cognates (e.g. Swedish word katt) than non-cognates in a picture-naming or lexical-decision task?

Arabic-English word order

Research question: Can people with substantial Qur'anic Arabic experience, but little or no spoken Arabic, use Arabic word order to remember short word sequences?

  • Does familiar word order guides recall beyond simply remembering the words.
  • Sequence language: English or Arabic;
  • Word order: SVO, VSO, or SOV.
  • Memor task demo: Gorilla.
1Study

see three words in one order

hunter sees bird
→
2Distractor

judge equation

7 + 5 = 13?
→
3Recall

recreate the studied order

bird hunter sees

Take-home: Same-order recall was above chance (Arabic 77%, English 80%): English showed clear SVO benefit, whereas Arabic recall was high but fairly flat across word orders.

Room for Mark’s examples

Chinese lexical decision

Research question: When Chinese readers make lexical decisions about Chinese words, is performance helped more by transparent Pinyin sound cues or by familiar Chinese character forms?

Why it matters

  • Pinyin gives clearer phonological information.
  • Chinese characters are the more practiced.

Task demo

Take-home: Character familiarity supported real-word decisions; Pinyin transparency did not make Chinese lexical decision generally easier.

Topic 1: Draw!

[Jens will tell you what]

Topic 1: Word order, direction, and event perception

Research question: Does language experience change how quickly people process visual events?

People often represent events as unfolding in a preferred direction, but it is unclear whether that comes from reading direction, word order, or the way both experiences align (Faghihi & Vaid, 2023; Maass et al., 2014; Roeser et al., 2026).

  • Language may influence how we mentally represent events, not just how we describe them.
  • Word order could matter because languages differ in how reliably agents, patients, subjects, and first-mentioned entities line up.
  • Reading/writing direction could matter because repeated spatial scanning experience makes one direction more practised.
  • Hypothesis: word order of a sentence and / or script direction cues picture recognition.

Topic 2: Cognate facilitation

Research question: Do bilinguals recognise, name, or write cognates more easily than non-cognates?

Cognates share form and meaning across languages, for example English computer and German Computer. Non-cognates share meaning without similar form, for example English chair and German Stuhl.

Why this matters:

Topic 2: Cognates and spelling diversity

Previous student project 3: Hindi-speaking children writing cognates and non-cognates using phonetic spelling.

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

Research question: Are bilinguals faster to retrieve words for concepts that are more familiar within the community of the language they are currently using?

Core idea: bilinguals may know a word in both languages, but a concept can be more practised, emotionally salient, or culturally embedded in one language community than another.

Examples:

  • rickshaw for an English-Hindi speaker
  • Bratwurst for an English-German speaker
  • Thanksgiving for someone whose other language community does not use the concept

Session roadmap

Term 1: build the project

  • Session 1: introduction and topic menu
  • Session 2: rationale and research questions
  • Session 3: study design and ethics
  • Session 4: introduction and evidence for the rationale
  • Session 5: implementing the study in a data-collection tool

Term 2: analyse and write

  • Session 6: methods and analysis plan
  • Session 7: data wrangling and inferential analysis
  • Session 8: report sections and assessment expectations
  • Session 9: using feedback and marking criteria
  • Session 10: draft troubleshooting, final supervision, and writing time

Homework milestones

  • S1: read papers; identify topic
  • S2: upload brief rationale
  • S3: draft ethics form by 30 Oct
  • S4: submit ethics
  • S5: implement study; data collection
  • S6: submit Design section
  • S7: analyse data; draft results
  • S8: plan discussion
  • S9: send draft by 5 March 2027
  • S10: implement feedback
Message: by the end of Term 1, students should be ready to collect or already collecting data.

Important deadlines

Date What happens
20 November 2026 Ethics form submission deadline
5 March 2027 Draft deadline
19 March 2027 Last date for draft feedback
25 March 2027 Supervision ends
15 April 2027, 2 pm Project hand-in deadline

Lab rules!

  • Do the tasks we set, when we set them.
  • Ask for help when you need it – do not wait until you are behind.
  • Use Teams or GitHub for project communication unless it is personal.
  • Good message: “I have been reading / thinking / trying this, but I am confused about… I think it could be this, but I need your input.”
  • Less useful message: “Tell me what to do.”
  • Attend lab sessions and engage with the process.
  • Most of your work has to happen between lab sessions.

Summary: projects need steady work, starting now. Like a job. We will help you, but we will not do the thinking or work for you, and you have to ask.

Your projects: Before next session

Between now and the start of the next session:

  • Choose a topic from the topic menu.
  • Identify at least one paper from the slides (second to last slide) to read and digest. The full references are on the final slide; if you have difficulty getting the full text, let us know.
  • Add the paper full text to Shared/week 1/papers so everyone can access it, and post a short message to say you have done this.
  • Optional: Generate a summary of one or more relevant papers using NotebookLM.
  • Read the paper. You will not understand every word, and you do not need to read every word: treat it as a launch pad for your own ideas.
  • Use AI tools such as Copilot, ChatGPT, or NotebookLM to unpack important unfamiliar terms, theories, and references. Keep asking until the explanation makes sense.
  • Find a few crucial cited papers and skim them.
  • By 6 October 2026, create a Teams post with an abbreviated version of your paper title as the post title.

Your Teams post

  • A bullet-point summary of what you learned from the paper (at least five bullets).
  • At least two important things you do not yet understand, using this structure: “This paper talks about […]. I think it is something to do with […], but what I do not understand is […].”
  • One idea about how the research might be developed, with a short rationale for why it could be interesting. This does not commit you to a project; it is to get you thinking in the right direction.

Reading recommendations

Start broad, then choose the specific papers for the topic you are leaning toward.

Broad starting points

  • Bilingual language processing: Schwieter (2024)
  • Bilingual speech planning: Kroll & Gollan (2014)
  • Bilingual word access: Runnqvist et al. (2014)
  • Language production: Wheeldon & Konopka (2023)

Topic-specific starting points

  • Word order, direction, and event perception: Faghihi & Vaid (2023); Roeser et al. (2026)
  • Cross-linguistic priming: Garcia et al. (2025)
  • Cognate facilitation: Sadat et al. (2016); Muylle et al. (2022); Mitchell et al. (2024)
  • Language-community familiarity and lexical retrieval: Brysbaert et al. (2024); Assche et al. (2020)
  • Writing and spelling: Kandel (2023); Iniesta et al. (2021)

References

Assche, E. van, Brysbaert, M., & Duyck, W. (2020). Bilingual lexical access. In R. R. Heredia & A. B. Cieślicka (Eds.), Bilingual lexical ambiguity resolution (pp. 42–68). Cambridge University Press.

Blasi, D. E., Henrich, J., Adamou, E., Kemmerer, D., & Majid, A. (2022). Over-reliance on English hinders cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(12), 1153–1170. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015

British Council. (2016). Which foreign languages will be most important for the UK post- Brexit? https://www.britishcouncil.org/research-insight/foreign-languages-post-brexit

Brysbaert, M., Martínez, G., & Reviriego, P. (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

Faghihi, N., & Vaid, J. (2023). Reading/writing direction as a source of directional bias in spatial cognition: Possible mechanisms and scope. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 30, 843–862. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02239-1

Garcia, R., Roeser, J., & Kidd, E. (2023). Finding your voice: Voice-specific effects in Tagalog reveal the limits of word order priming. Cognition, 236, 105424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105424

Garcia, R., Roeser, J., Vargas, J. C., Fathin, S., & Kidd, E. (2025). Teasing apart the impact of different forms of overlap on cross-linguistic structural priming. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 40(10), 1446–1464. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2025.2558640

Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(2–3), 61–83. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X0999152X

Iniesta, A., Paolieri, D., Serrano, F., & Bajo, M. T. (2021). Bilingual writing coactivation: Lexical and sublexical processing in a word dictation task. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 24, 902–917. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000274

Kandel, S. (2023). Written production: The APOMI model of word writing: Anticipatory processing of orthographic and motor information. In R. J. Hartsuiker & K. Strijkers (Eds.), Language production (1st ed., pp. 209–232). Routledge.

Kidd, E., & Garcia, R. (2022). How diverse is child language acquisition research? First Language, 42(6), 703–735. https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237211066405

Kroll, J. F., & Gollan, T. H. (2014). Speech planning in two languages: What bilinguals tell us about language production. In M. Goldrick, V. Ferreira, & M. Miozzo (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language production (pp. 165–181). Oxford University Press.

Maass, A., Suitner, C., & Nadhmi, F. (2014). What drives the spatial agency bias? An Italian– Malagasy– Arabic comparison study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 991–996. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034989

Mitchell, L., Tsui, R. K.-Y., & Byers-Heinlein, K. (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

Muylle, M., Van Assche, E., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2022). Comparing the cognate effect in spoken and written second language word production. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 25, 93–107. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000444

Office for National Statistics. (2022). Language, England and Wales: Census 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/language/bulletins/languageenglandandwales/census2021

Roeser, J., Ali, S., & Garcia, R. (2026). Flexible word order weakens the behavioural signature of spatial agency bias: A Bayesian reanalysis of Tagalog comprehension, eye tracking, and production.

Roeser, J., Conijn, R., Chukharev, E., Ofstad, G. H., & Torrance, M. (2025). Typing in tandem: Language planning in multisentence text production is fundamentally parallel. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 154(7), 1824–1854. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001759

Roeser, J., De Maeyer, S., Leijten, M., & Van Waes, L. (2024). Modelling typing disfluencies as finite mixture process. Reading and Writing, 37, 359–384. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10203-z

Roeser, J., Torrance, M., & Baguley, T. (2019). Advance planning in written and spoken sentence production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 45(11), 1983–2009. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000685

Roeser, J., Torrance, M., & Baguley, T. (2025). Semantic contrast ahead: Contrast guides pre-planning in complex noun-phrase production. Language and Cognition, 17, e64. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2025.10022

Runnqvist, E., Strijkers, K., & Costa, A. (2014). Bilingual word access. In M. Goldrick, V. Ferreira, & M. Miozzo (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language production (pp. 182–198). Oxford University Press.

Sadat, J., Martin, C. D., Magnuson, J. S., Alario, F.-X., & Costa, A. (2016). Breaking down the bilingual cost in speech production. Cognitive Science, 40(8), 1911–1940. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12315

Schwieter, J. W. (2024). Bilingual language processing. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.370

Tiffin-Richards, S. 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

United Nations. (2024). Multilingual education: A key to quality and inclusive learning. https://www.un.org/uk/node/214628

Van Gompel, R. P. G., & Arai, M. (2018). Structural priming in bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21(3), 448–455. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728917000542

Wheeldon, L. R., & Konopka, A. (2023). Grammatical encoding for speech production. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009264518