Bilingualism in Context: A Bayesian Psychometric Network Analysis of Language and Culture Among U.S. Heritage Spanish–English Speakers of Latin American Descent

Bilingualism has increasingly been understood as a multidimensional and context-sensitive experience, prompting growing interest in how specific aspects of bilingual language use relate to cognition. We used Bayesian psychometric network analysis to examine how bilingual language practices, bicultural identity management, and cognition relate within the same system in a sample of 404 U.S.-born heritage Spanish-English bilingual adults of Latin American descent. This approach conceptualizes bilingualism as a complex system, quantifies uncertainty in the estimated network structure, and identifies aspects of bilingual experience that serve as bridges to cognition and bicultural identity. The strongest bridges between domains were the edge between language mixing and attentional control and the edge between unintended language switching and bicultural harmony. These findings provide a more holistic and socially infused characterization of how bilingualism, biculturalism, and cognition interact in U.S. heritage speakers of Spanish.