Executive Functions (EFs) are known to play a role in academic performance, especially in reading and mathematics, but their role in spelling is not clear and has received scant research attention. The present study targets this gap in the literature and examines the contribution of EFs to spelling beyond phonological awareness (PA). It broadens the perspective by concomitantly examining spelling in L1 Arabic and in English as a foreign language. Measures of EFs (working memory, inhibition, and shifting), Arabic and English PA, and Arabic and English spelling were administered to a sample of 84 fifth graders and 80 eighth graders. Results demonstrated that working memory showed a marginally significant contribution to spelling in Arabic, but not in English, whereas inhibition and shifting did not significantly predict spelling in either language. Further, the links between EFs and spelling remained stable across the two grade levels. These findings identify working memory as a potential contributor to spelling which may vary depending on the language status, but do not support the contribution of inhibition and shifting to spelling.

Abstract This study examined whether changes in proficiency balance between the source languages and the target language of trilinguals modulate the cognate facilitation effect. Participants were Arabic–Hebrew–English different-script trilinguals who were partially immersed in an L2 speaking environment. For three consecutive years, 88 university students completed a battery of subjective and objective proficiency tasks in each of their languages and a semantic relatedness task in English, including cognate and control primes. Results showed that the comparable cognate facilitation across double (L1–L3 and L2–L3) and triple (L1-L2-L3) cognate items remained stable across all three timepoints, despite increases in L2 proficiency. These findings indicate that in a semantic task, facilitation can occur through the L1, the L2 or both, and that increases in source-language proficiency do not necessarily lead to increases in cross-language influences from that language.

The importance of additional language learning (ALL) is on the rise, but we do not yet have a full understanding of how learners with different characteristics approach this task. Here, we discuss the potential impact of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a prevalent learning disability, on classroom ALL. Learners with ADHD show difficulties in the attention networks of sustained attention and executive control. It is critical, therefore, to ask how these difficulties of learners with ADHD might manifest in the demanding task of ALL, but to date there is very limited research examining this issue. The current paper sets out a theoretical framework for examining ALL in learners with ADHD, reviews the extant literature, and most importantly calls for future research to examine the way in which learners with ADHD manage the process of ALL, in an effort to highlight the involvement of sustained attention and executive control in ALL more generally.

Fast sleep spindles and slow-wave sleep (SWS) have been linked to memory consolidation, however, their associations with learning and longer term retention of different aspects of language remain unclear. We investigated the temporal dynamics of consolidation of vocabulary and grammar, and their links with these sleep metrics. Young adult participants were trained in the evening on an artificial language that used plural inflections with an underlying morpho-phonological regularity that was not taught explicitly. Some of the words were presented frequently and others infrequently. Polysomnographic measures were collected during the night following learning; participants were tested on the vocabulary, trained inflections, and generalisation to untrained words at four time points across nine days. Accuracy on the vocabulary test improved across the first night following learning, and the change was positively associated with SWS duration. Memory for infrequent words declined towards Day 9, but greater spindle density during the first night was associated with a smaller decline. Although mean group accuracy on trained inflections did not significantly change overnight, individually, the change was negatively correlated with spindle density. Generalisation accuracy showed no change across time and no correlations with sleep characteristics. Overall, the results demonstrate that vocabulary and grammar learning have different temporal dynamics of consolidation and distinct patterns of association with sleep metrics. The findings suggest a protective role of spindles for long-term retention of memory, particularly of weakly encoded items, and emphasise the need to dissociate the benefits of SWS from those of spindles.

Encoding information in reference to the self leads to improved memory, a phenomenon termed the self-reference effect. Learning vocabulary in a foreign language (L2) is a challenging memory task, because learning thousands of words is necessary to achieve listening and reading comprehension. The current study examined the efficacy of self-reference encoding for L2 vocabulary learning. In Experiment 1, native Hebrew speakers learned rare English words with a self-reference task and a control condition of translation repetition. In Experiment 2, participants learned with the same self-reference task and a control task of semantic processing. Across both experiments, memory was higher in the self-reference condition in both an immediate and a delayed test one week later. Thus, self-reference might be adopted as a learning tool in L2 vocabulary learning. Further, we demonstrate the contribution of self-reference to learning new information, going beyond previous demonstration of its positive impact on episodic encoding of known information.

The present study examined how Arabic-Hebrew-English trilinguals process double and triple cognate words in their third language (L3) across three different experiments. Utilizing the same set of critical cognate items, trilinguals completed a semantic relatedness task, a lexical decision task, or a sentence reading eye-tracking task. The results revealed a significant cognate facilitation effect in the semantic relatedness task, with no consistent differences in the magnitude of facilitation across double and triple cognates, suggesting that both L1 and L2 are activated during L3 processing. In contrast, no cognate facilitation was observed in the lexical decision or the sentence reading tasks. These results demonstrate that the cognate facilitation is task-dependent, varying with the degree to which meaning is activated, sentential context is available, and orthographic cues are involved. Critically, the study extends findings of phonologically mediated cross-language activation from bilinguals to trilinguals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Spelling in English as a foreign language (EFL) has been relatively understudied, particularly among learners whose first language (L1) utilizes an abjad writing system. Thus, the current study sought to enhance understanding of EFL spelling by examining the accuracy and frequent errors in spelling various phonemes and orthographic conventions among fifth-grade (N = 84) and eighth-grade (N = 80) Arabic-speaking students. Participants were presented with pseudowords composed mostly of phonological and orthographic features that are novel to Arabic speakers, and therefore may pose spelling challenges for them. Results revealed that students in both grades demonstrated lower accuracy in spelling vowels than consonants, struggled more with novel phonemes than familiar ones, and faced challenges in spelling the digraph, a novel orthographic convention, providing support for the linguistic and orthographic proximity hypothesis . In addition, the spelling accuracy for most phonemes and orthographic conventions was comparable between fifth and eighth grades, and the most frequent types of errors were also very similar. These results underscore the challenges of spelling novel orthographic conventions and phonemes for EFL learners at the early and intermediate stages of English instruction. These findings can be attributed to the limited exposure to English in a foreign language setting, along with inadequate literacy instruction. Pedagogical implications for EFL instruction are provided.

Adult phonological processing may be affected by previous linguistic knowledge. Here, we examine how phonological perception and production in a third-language (L3) are affected by multilinguals' first- (L1) and second-languages (L2). To this end, Arabic-Hebrew-English trilinguals (n = 41) completed an oddity (perception) task and a word repetition (production) task in English (the L3). Critically, word pairs (n = 96) targeted phonological contrasts that overlap between English and Arabic (L1), English and Hebrew (L2), English and both Arabic and Hebrew (Both) or exist uniquely in English (None). Results showed that words including phonological contrasts that exist in L1 Arabic (L1 & Both conditions) were perceived more accurately than those that do not exist in the L1 (L2 & None conditions). This pattern cannot be the mere result of item characteristics, because using the same items, a control group of Hebrew-English bilinguals (n = 39) responded more accurately when phonological contrasts overlapped with Hebrew (their L1). We further verified that the L2 contrasts had at least partially been acquired in the L2, by testing an additional group of trilinguals (n = 27), who performed above chance on these contrasts when embedded in an L2 task. Judgments collected from monolingual English evaluators revealed that trilingual productions exhibited the same pattern as that observed in perception, with more intelligible productions of contrasts which overlap with the L1, but not with the L2. Thus, multilinguals appear to draw on their L1 knowledge, but not on their L2 knowledge, while processing phonological information in the L3. The findings further underscore the relation between phonological perception and production in the L3.

Reading comprehension is a complex skill, which relies on language comprehension and reading fluency, as well as higher-order cognitive skills, including executive functions. Bilingual children, who speak a heritage language, have less exposure to the societal language and thus may experience difficulties in reading comprehension, related to reduced linguistic knowledge. Here we examined the possibility that bilingual children may be able to recruit additional cognitive abilities to support their reading comprehension. Thus, we tested third grade children who are either monolingual speakers of Hebrew (n = 86) or bilingual speakers of Hebrew and an additional heritage language (n = 86). Participants completed assessments of reading comprehension, reading fluency, Hebrew vocabulary and executive functions (working memory, inhibition and cognitive flexibility). Results showed higher scores for monolingual children in reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, but no group differences in executive function skills. For both groups, reading fluency and vocabulary contributed to reading comprehension. The picture for executive functions was more complex. When analyzing all children, both working memory and inhibition significantly predicted reading comprehension. However, when examining each group separately, none of the executive functions were meaningful predictors of reading comprehension for monolingual children, whereas for bilingual children inhibition significantly predicted reading comprehension. We interpret this pattern as suggesting that bilingual children may rely more on executive functions in order to overcome vocabulary and reading difficulties and possibly to manage interference from the other language.

The current study tested the hypothesis that bilingual language control mechanisms vary depending on the extent of competition for selection. Forty-eight English-dominant Spanish-English bilinguals switched languages in production of single words, which was elicited with picture naming versus reading aloud in counterbalanced order. Results revealed some key similarities across tasks including: a) significant switch costs, b) larger switch costs in the dominant when compared to the nondominant language (i.e., in English versus in Spanish), and c) only the nondominant language benefitted from repetition. However, switch costs were larger in picture naming than in reading aloud, and only the picture naming task exhibited the strongest signature effect of inhibition of the dominant language in the form of reversed language dominance. These results provide evidence that language control mechanisms adapt to meet varying task demands depending on the nature and extent of competition for selection between languages.

The present study tests the hypothesis that the directionality of reading habits (left-to-right or right-to-left) impacts individuals’ representation of nonspatial events. Using the blank screen paradigm, we examine whether eye movements reflect culture-specific spatial biases in processing temporal information, specifically, grammatical tense in Russian and Hebrew. Sixty-two native speakers of Russian (a language with a left-to-right reading and writing system) and 62 native speakers of Hebrew (a language with a right-to-left reading and writing system) listened to verbs in the past or future tense while their spontaneous gaze positions were recorded. Following the verb, a visual spatial probe appeared in one of the five locations of the screen, and participants responded manually to indicate its position. While participants’ response latencies to the spatial probe revealed no significant effects, their gaze positions along the horizontal axis for past- and future-tensed verbs aligned with the reading and writing direction in their language. These results provide novel evidence that eye movements during auditory processing of grammatical tense are influenced by culturally specific reading and writing conventions, shifting leftward or rightward on the horizontal plane depending on the stimuli’s time reference (past or future) and the participants’ language (Russian or Hebrew). This spatial bias indicates a common underlying cognitive mechanism that uses spatial dimensions to represent temporal constructs.

Bilingual children are at risk for gaps in literacy in the societal language compared to monolingual peers. However, most research has focused on reading achievement, and only few studies have investigated spelling abilities, with contradictory findings. Here, we compare Hebrew spelling skill and its predictors in bilingual and monolingual elementary school children, immersed in Hebrew as a societal language. Specifically, we examined the morphological elements in Hebrew spelling. Monolingual children outperformed bilingual children in spelling accuracy, in both 2nd and 4th grade. In addition, phonological awareness and morphological awareness were significant predictors of spelling for both groups, but their relative contribution differed across the groups. Finally, even though bilingual children had lower morphological knowledge than monolingual peers, both groups showed the expected developmental pattern of spelling function letters more accurately than root letters. This pattern in Hebrew spelling acquisition is driven by the morpho-orthographic regularities of the language. These results support previous findings emphasizing the role of morphology in Hebrew spelling acquisition, extending them to bilingual children. We suggest that examining the linguistic backgrounds of children and the unique characteristics of the language and orthography are crucial for reaching a nuanced understanding of bilingual spelling acquisition.

A questionnaire including language learning history, proficiency and use designed for diverse multilingual speakers. In Hebrew.

BackgroundReading and comprehending texts is challenging for students in higher education, especially when reading in English as a foreign language (EFL). An important component of efficient reading comprehension is the ability to accurately self-monitor understanding and performance, though most readers are not accurate at monitoring their comprehension.AimsThis study investigated whether online, immediate and repetitive feedback on the process of calibration of comprehension, can improve comprehension monitoring when reading in native (L1) and foreign languages (FL), and whether such improvement can be generalized across languages.SampleParticipants were 138 undergraduate Hebrew-English bilingual university students.MethodsMonitoring accuracy was calculated through the paradigm of ‘calibration of comprehension’. Participants were divided into four study groups according to the language of reading (L1 or FL) and the exposure to feedback on calibration (with or without). Participants attended a total of five study sessions: a pre-exposure session, three exposure sessions and a fifth post-exposure session.ResultsOnly students who engaged with texts in the FL and received feedback showed improved monitoring accuracy. This improvement did not generalize to their L1.ConclusionsPedagogically, these results indicate that comprehension monitoring skills can be improved through online, immediate and repetitive feedback, especially in the FL. We suggest that FL comprehension was amenable to change because it met the optimal level of text difficulty to engage participants with the monitoring process. Thus, online feedback supported by digital technology may offer distinctive educational opportunities for bolstering comprehension monitoring.

We present the Hebrew Learner Essay Corpus (HELEECS): an annotated corpus of Hebrew language argumentative essays authored by prospective higher-education students. The corpus includes essays by two main populations: (1) essays by native speakers of Hebrew, written as part of the psychometric exam that is used to assess their future success in academic studies; (2) essays by non-native speakers of Hebrew, with three different native languages (Arabic, French, and Russian), that were written as part of a language aptitude test. The corpus is uniformly encoded and stored. The non-native essays were annotated with target hypotheses (i.e., hypothesized intended formulations in standard written Hebrew). The corpus is available for research purposes upon request. We describe the corpus and the error correction and annotation schemes used in its analysis. In addition to introducing this new resource, we discuss the challenges of identifying and analyzing non-native language use. Among these challenges are determining whether the language used in a particular utterance is native-like, and determining the target hypothesis when language use is non-native-like. We propose various ways for dealing with these challenges.

This study mapped the trajectory of developing derivational morphological knowledge in Hebrew monolingual and Russian-Hebrew bilingual children. We investigated 2nd and 4th graders, using a two-by-two structure along the dimensions of modality (comprehension, production) and type of word (real-word, pseudo-word). Performance in the morphological analogies comprehension tasks improved with grade, and monolingual and bilingual children performed equally well. A different pattern was evident in production tasks. In real-word production, monolingual children were more accurate than bilingual children, but this group difference narrowed with age. In pseudo-word production, monolingual children used more morphological elements than bilingual children, and there was also a tendency towards group differences narrowing with age. Detailed error analyses across all tasks revealed that monolingual children recruited more morphological elements than bilingual children. We present implications for assessment of morphological knowledge, and suggest that morphological intervention is a promising avenue for promoting bilingual children's success.

Bilinguals often show evidence of cross language influences, such as facilitation in processing cognates. Here we use computational methods for analyzing spontaneous English texts written by hundreds of speakers of different L1s, at different levels of English proficiency, to investigate writers' preference for using cognates over alternative word choices. We focus on English, since a majority of its lexicon is either of Romance or Germanic origin, allowing an investigation of the preference of speakers of Germanic and Romance L1s towards cognates between their L1 and English. Results show that L2 writers tend to prefer English cognates, and that this tendency is weaker as English proficiency level increases, suggesting diminishing effects of CLI. However, a comparison of the L2 writers with native English writers shows general overuse of cognates only for the Germanic, but not the Romance, L1 speakers, most likely due to the register of argumentative writing.

Aims and Objective: Bilingualism has been proposed to affect cognitive flexibility, but findings in the literature are mixed. One reason for this might be the different trajectories of how participants acquired the second language, either through immersion or formal education. The present study investigates differences and commonalities of becoming bilingual depending on trajectory. Methodology: To assess cognitive flexibility, participants completed a task-switching and a language-switching paradigm, which were well-matched to each other. Language capabilities were assessed by self-report, objective fluency measures, and balance quotients. We assessed participants of five bilingual populations who together spoke five different languages. Data and Analysis: We analyzed global mixing costs, reflecting proactive language and task control, as well as local switch costs, reflecting reactive language and task control processes. The impact of language capabilities on mixing costs was assessed using linear mixed models. We also report correlations among language capability measures, sociodemographic variables, and working memory. Findings: We observed reliable mixing costs but no switch costs. Task and language mixing costs were smaller in participants who had a later age of L2 onset and higher L2 phonemic fluency, namely those who followed the formal education path to bilingualism. L2 phonemic fluency was the most consistent predictor for overall performance speed and reduced mixing costs. Originality: Using three different study sites and participants differing in their trajectory of becoming bilingual, this study provides a more diverse picture than many previous studies. Furthermore, using small language populations, the study shows the benefits of language fluency measures that are widely available. Significance and Implications: The present study bolsters the conceptualization of bilingualism as a multifaceted experience. Nonetheless, in the current study, bilingualism led to comparable outcomes in cognitive flexibility. Finally, measuring language capabilities should carefully consider cognitive processes not related to language that could explain variability in performance.