Today, more than half of the world’s children are raised bilingually. Little is known about how language comprehension unfolds in a moment-by-moment manner in bilingual children. The proposed start-up project aims to conduct three innovative experiments to investigate prediction and integration during sentence comprehensions among bilingual children speaking different language pairs (in Israel: L1-Russian/L2-Hebrew and L1-Enlgish/L2-Hebrew; in the USA: L1-Russian/L2-Enlgish and L1-Hebrew/L2-Enlgish).

We will test whether and how bilingual children integrate linguistic information to predict the upcoming information in simple sentences, e.g., The teacher will draw the boy vs. The teacher will be drawn by the boy. Russian and Hebrew provide an excellent test case as both languages use special markings which help listeners understand who did what to whom (Hebrew: ha-more yicaer et ha-yeld vs. et ha-more yicaer ha-yeled),  Russian: učitel' narisuet mal’čika  vs. učitel'ja narisuet mal’čik).  In Experiment 1 “An eye-tracking study”, we will evaluate mechanisms of prediction in L1 and L2. In Experiment 2 “An ERP study”, we will investigate mechanisms of integration by testing if bilingual children are sensitive to ungrammaticalities. Third, a unique method of co-registration of eye-movements and ERPs (Experiment 3: An eye-tracking and ERP co-registration study) will enable us to investigate moment-by-moment prediction and integration processes simultaneously within the same experimental paradigm.

The study will deepen our understanding of how language comprehension unfolds in bilingual children in their two languages, how the two languages interact and whether processes of production and comprehension are related in bilinguals. The study is of theoretical as well as of clinical / applied importance as it could direct applied research in developing more reliable diagnostic assessment tools for bilingual children.