TY  - JOUR
A1  - Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie
A1  - Bhatara, Anjali
A1  - Unger, Annika
A1  - Nazzi, Thierry
A1  - Höhle, Barbara
T1  - Rhythmic grouping biases in simultaneous bilinguals
JF  - Bilingualism : language and cognition
N2  - This study provides a novel approach for testing the universality of perceptual biases by looking at speech processing in simultaneous bilingual adults learning two languages that support the maintenance of this bias to different degrees. Specifically, we investigated the Iambic/Trochaic Law, an assumed universal grouping bias, in simultaneous French-German bilinguals, presenting them with streams of syllables varying in intensity, duration or neither and asking them whether they perceived them as strong-weak or weak-strong groupings. Results showed robust, consistent grouping preferences. A comparison to monolinguals from previous studies revealed that they pattern with German-speaking monolinguals, and differ from French-speaking monolinguals. The distribution of simultaneous bilinguals' individual performance was best explained by a model fitting a unimodal (not bimodal) distribution, failing to support two subgroups of language dominance. Moreover, neither language experience nor language context predicted their performance. These findings suggest a special role for universal biases in simultaneous bilinguals.
KW  - simultaneous bilingualism
KW  - universal bias
KW  - rhythm
KW  - rhythmic grouping
KW  - Iambic
KW  - Trochaic Law
Y1  - 2020
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000140
SN  - 1366-7289
SN  - 1469-1841
VL  - 23
IS  - 5
SP  - 1070
EP  - 1081
PB  - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY  - New York
ER  -