“Bilingualism Reveals How Experience Shapes Language and the Brain”

Variation in language experience plays an important role in our understanding of language learning and processing. Increasing evidence suggests that the ways in which bilinguals use their languages with different people and across distinct interactional contexts may contribute to observed variability in processing trajectories and outcomes. In this talk, Anne Beatty-Martínez presents converging evidence using brain and behavioral measures to demonstrate how bilinguals who are highly proficient in the same two languages engage language and cognitive resources differently depending on the communicative demands of their language environment. She proposes a framework that exploits such variability and illustrates how it can be applied to develop an international network for research on diverse bilingual populations. Overall, the emerging picture is complex but systematic, suggesting that the language system is dynamic and adaptive to the demands of distinct contexts of language use.