Project Details
Projekt
Bilingual Flexibility: Language control in the interplay of cross-linguistic transfer and language prediction in morphosyntactic processing for adults and children
Applicant
Professor Dr. Thomas Günther
Subject Area
General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 548577702
Bilingual flexibility requires rapid adaptation to changing language contexts, drawing on both situational language control and longer-term linguistic experiences. This project examines how bilingual adults and children in their early schoolyears (aged 6 to 10), process morphosyntactic cues - particularly grammatical gender - in predictive language comprehension. We conduct two study lines: one with adults to investigate cross-linguistic morphosyntax in proficient bilinguals, and another involving multiple age groups of children to trace the development of bilingual language control over childhood. Using a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm, we systematically compare blocked (proactive) and trial-based (reactive) language switching to investigate how the presence or absence of grammatical gender (German/French vs. English) interacts with predictive comprehension. Our focus lies on cross-linguistic transfer, exploring how morphosyntactic cues in one language influence comprehension in another while switching languages. In study line 2, we additionally combine standardized questionnaires with an ambulatory assessment component, capturing real-life language switching frequency and contexts to relate daily usage patterns to eye-tracking measures. By tracking performance in both adults and children, we illuminate how bilingual language control emerges from early school years to adulthood. In line with the research unit’s overarching aim, our findings will clarify how morphosyntactic structures shape predictive comprehension under proactive and reactive constraints, linking these short-term situational processes with longer-term developmental aspects of bilingual flexibility.
DFG Programme
Research Units
