An Integrative Approach to Bilingual Cognition: Preliminary Insights into Phonetic Learning and Sensorimotor Adaptation

Laura Spinu^1,2*Yasaman Rafat³Duke Shereen⁴Brad Sutton⁵Maida Percival⁶Anastasiia Myslyk⁷Jiyoon Kim⁵

• ¹Kingsborough Community College, Brooklyn, United States
• ²The Graduate Center,The City University of New York, New York City, New York, United States
• ³Western University, London, Ontario, Canada
• ⁴The City University of New York, New York, New York, United States
• ⁵University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, United States
• ⁶University of Oxford, Oxford, England, United Kingdom
• ⁷Touro University, New York City, New York, United States

This study investigates the cognitive consequences of bilingualism by examining phonetic learning, speech motor adaptation, and verbal memory. Early Spanish-English bilinguals divided into high and intermediate proficiency groups and English monolinguals completed three tasks:(1) production of an artificial English accent with novel phonotactic rules, (2) serial digit span in English, and (3) production of unfamiliar speech sounds during real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rtMRI). Bilinguals, particularly those with high proficiency, outperformed monolinguals in phonetic and articulatory learning. In the memory task, no group-level differences emerged overall, but high bilinguals showed stronger primacy effects at moderate sequence lengths, suggesting more efficient encoding. We also demonstrate the feasibility of using real-time magnetic resonance imaging (rtMRI) to assess articulatory behavior in cognitive studies of bilingualism, with minimal need for manual post-processing. These results support a shift toward investigating task-specific and process-based effects of language experience.