Language and Cognition Research Group

About the group

The Language and Cognition research group studies how language is processed, learned and controlled in the mind, with a particular focus on bilingual and multilingual speakers.

Most of the world’s language users know more than one language, and this raises questions that monolingual models of language cannot answer. How do bilinguals keep two languages available at once without constant interference? What does it cost to switch between them, and what does that cost reveal about cognitive control? How do learners build a second-language vocabulary, and does making learning harder in the short term make it stick in the long term? How do readers use context to anticipate words, and does that process differ in a second language?

We approach these questions experimentally. Our work combines carefully controlled materials, behavioural measures of production and comprehension, individual-differences testing, and mixed-effects statistical modelling. We publish in international peer-reviewed journals in psycholinguistics and bilingualism, and we involve students at every stage of that process.

Group members

Research focus

Bilingual language control

One strand asks how bilinguals select the language they intend to speak, and what makes that selection harder or easier. We use language-switching paradigms to measure the cost of alternating between languages, and we manipulate the conditions under which switching happens in order to isolate the mechanisms involved.

Recent work has examined how language control adapts to cognitive load, and how control differs when switches are externally cued versus freely chosen by the speaker. A related line asks what kind of stimulus is being named: naming digits and naming pictures produce different switching profiles, which speaks to whether bilingual control operates over conceptual, lexical or phonological representations. We have pursued this question in proficient bilinguals and in beginning (ab initio) learners, where the control system is still being built.

Second language learning and desirable difficulties

A second emerging line of research asks whether difficulty during practice helps or hinders long-term learning. The desirable difficulties framework predicts that effortful retrieval slows immediate performance but strengthens later retention. Bilingualism offers a natural way to create that difficulty: the non-target language competes during retrieval, and resolving that competition is effortful.

Second language comprehension and prediction

We study how second-language readers and listeners use context to anticipate what comes next. This includes how sentence-level predictability interacts with lexical properties during L2 reading, how readers parse verbs whose meanings carry presuppositions about truth (factivity and alternating factivity), and how discourse context shapes the interpretation of pronouns and reflexives.

Language, cognition and the lifespan

We are interested in language and cognition beyond the young-adult samples that dominate the field. Work in this strand includes the cognitive consequences of literacy-based foreign-language learning in older adults, and longitudinal study of how lexical tone and intonation change in infant-directed speech as children develop.

Affect, motivation and individual differences in language learning

A further strand asks how learners’ beliefs and emotions shape language learning and use. This includes how mindsets about ability translate into the emotions learners experience in the foreign-language classroom, how a sense of control over a task relates to anxiety and to reading comprehension in young readers, and how cognitive and task-related factors such as working memory and topic familiarity shape second-language writing.

Selected publications

Group members’ recent and representative work:

• Chaouch-Orozco, A., & Liu, H. (2026). Digits switch differently: Evidence of divergent cognitive control mechanisms in picture and digit language switching among ab initio learners. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.
• Liu, H., Chaouch-Orozco, A., & Sperlich, D. (2026). Differential adaptation of bilingual language control to cognitive load: Evidence from cued and voluntary switching. Memory & Cognition.
• Liu, H., Sperlich, D., & Yao, P. (2026). Sentence predictability and lexical factors during L2 reading. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism.
• Sperlich, D., Liu, H.*, & Jeaco, S. (2026). Parsing factivity and alternating factivity verbs. Discourse Processes. (*co-first author)
• Wei, D., Van Mensel, L., & Xu, C. (2026). Linking mindsets to emotions in foreign language learning: A study integrating situated expectancy-value and control-value theories across proficiency levels. System, 138, 103975.
• Wang, L., & Wong, P. C. M. (2025). Age-related changes in lexical tones and intonation in Cantonese infant-directed speech: A longitudinal study. Journal of Child Language, 52(5), 1080–1103.
• Liu, H. (2023). Attention: The cognitive effects of literacy-based Arabic learning by Chinese learners at an old age. Sage Open, 13(3).
• Liu, H., & Chaouch-Orozco, A. (2022). Is the digit effect a cognate effect? Digits (still) differ from pictures in non-phonologically mediated language switching. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 26(3), 469–475.

Working with students

Students are not spectators in this group. They co-author papers, run experiments, analyse data and present findings. Several have gone on to doctoral study and clinical careers in related fields.

Teaching

Our research feeds directly into what we teach.

• LNG208 Psycholinguistics — undergraduate introduction to how language is produced, comprehended and represented in the mind (led by Dr Dawei Wei)
• LNG414 Psycholinguistics of Multilingualism — MA-level module on language processing and control in multilingual speakers (led by Dr Hong Liu)
• LNG207 Language Acquisition — undergraduate introduction to how language is acquired (led by Dr Luchang Wang)

Research methods workshops

We have run workshop series introducing students to the methods used in language and cognition research:

• Eye-tracking workshops
• R workshops

If you would like to know more about the group, join us, or enquire about supervision or research assistant positions, please contact the group leader, Dr Hong Liu (hong.liu@xjtlu.edu.cn) or Dr Darcy Sperlich (Darcy.Sperlich@xjtlu.edu.cn).