What Do Bilingual Models Tell Us About the Neurocognition of Multiple Languages?

This chapter provides a review of both the bilingual cognitive models and the neural evidence in support of these models. The interactive activation in the bilingual interactive activation (BIA) model is affected by the reader's proficiency in the language and the current state of language activation. The inhibitory control (IC) model explicitly included inhibition in its model name and in the mechanisms that support bilingual processing. The IC model and the BIA model have some surface level similarities. They both involve a form of language-tagging, assuming that words in individual languages are associated with information about the language to which they belong, and both models utilize task schemas. The chapter discusses evidence for the existence of task schemas, proficiency-modulated lemma activation, and multiple levels of inhibition. It points out some new directions in the study of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the representation and processing of multiple languages.