Previous research has shown that people make systematically different decisions when faced with a moral dilemma in a native than in a foreign language [e.g. Costa, A., A. Foucart, S. Hayakawa, M. Aparici, J. Apesteguia, J. Heafner, and B. Keysar. 2014. “Your Morals Depend on Language.” PLoS One 9 (4): e94842]. The aim of the current study is to test the limits of this so-called Foreign-Language Effect by examining (1) whether it holds for highly proficient bilinguals of a closely related language pair (i.e. Dutch-English), and (2) whether it can be replicated in an auditory setting. In Experiment 1, 60 Dutch-English bilinguals read moral dilemmas in Dutch or in English, whereas in Experiment 2, a different sample of 60 Dutch-English bilinguals listened to the same dilemmas. After reading or listening, participants’ task was to indicate whether the proposed action was appropriate or not. The results showed that the Foreign-Language Effect was absent in Experiment 1, but present in Experiment 2. These findings aid in understanding the robustness of the Foreign-Language Effect, revealing that in some contexts it may be overcome and/or inhibited, whereas in others it may be enhanced.

This study examined whether theForeign-Language effect, an increase in bilinguals’ rate of rational decisions to moral dilemmas in their foreign versus their native language, is influenced by emotion and the modality in which the dilemmas are presented. 154 Dutch–English bilinguals were asked to read and listen to personal and impersonal moral dilemmas in Dutch or in English. Importantly, the reading task had the character of a self-paced reading task to resemble the listening task as closely as possible. In both modalities, participants’ task was to indicate whether the proposed action was appropriate or not. Results showed that the Foreign-Language effect was present for personal dilemmas only. In addition, an effect of modality demonstrated that participants took overall more rational decisions during the listening than the reading task. These findings give insight in the interplay between language, emotion and task demands, revealing that moral decision making is context-dependent.

This study investigated whether cross-linguistic differences affect semantic prediction. We assessed this by looking at two languages, Dutch and Turkish, that differ in word order and thus vary in how words come together to create sentence meaning. In an eye-tracking task, Dutch and Turkish four-year-olds ( N = 40), five-year-olds ( N = 58), and adults ( N = 40) were presented with a visual display containing two familiar objects (e.g., a cake and a tree). Participants heard semantically constraining (e.g., “The boy eats the big cake”) or neutral sentences (e.g., “The boy sees the big cake”) in their native language. The Dutch data revealed a prediction effect for children and adults; however, it was larger for the adults. The Turkish data revealed no prediction effect for the children but only for the adults. These findings reveal that experience with word order structures and/or automatization of language processing routines may lead to timecourse differences in semantic prediction.