Bilingual mental lexicon and processing: The interplay of language and cognition

The aim of the study is to explore the function of the mental lexicon, specifically lexical ambiguity resolution, in bilingual developing grammars. To this aim, we assessed homonym meaning activation in Albanian-Greek speaking bilingual children aged 10 to 12 years old. For their linguistic profiling, we employed language input indexes for the L1(s) and L2 and a standardized test for productive vocabulary skills in Greek. To evaluate the role of cognitive capacity, we measured verbal working memory and inhibitory control. The data analysis showed that processing was related to cognition, and visual word recognition skills to bilingual language experience.