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Spoken lessons (lectures) are commonly used in schools as a medium for conveying educational content. In adolescence, experience-expectant maturation of language and cognitive systems supports learning; however, little is known about whether or how learners' language experiences interact with this integration process during learning. We examined functional connectivity using fMRI in 38 Spanish–English bilingual (L1-Spanish) and English monolingual (L1-English) adolescents during a naturalistic science video lesson in English. Seed analyses including the left inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis) and posterior middle temporal gyrus showed that L1-Spanish adolescents, when learning in their second language (L2), displayed widespread bilateral functional connectivity throughout the cortex while L1-English adolescents displayed mostly left-lateralized connectivity with core language regions over the course of the science lesson. Furthermore, we identified functional seed connectivity associated with better learning outcomes for adolescents with diverse language backgrounds. Importantly, functional connectivity patterns in L1-Spanish adolescents while learning in English also correlate with their Spanish cloze reading. Findings suggest that functional networks associated with higher-order language processing and cognitive control are differentially engaged for L1 vs. L2 speakers while learning new information through spoken language. 

Ellen Bialystok’s early work from 1976–1988 has had a lasting influence on the fields of bilingualism and linguistics. This chapter reviews her seminal work establishing bilingualism as a cross-disciplinary area of study in 1976. It then explores Bialystok’s language processing research of the 1980’s, articulating two of her crucial, yet often overlooked achievements. First, Bialystok’s early information processing models for word-level representations set the stage for an explosion of cognitive bilingualism research by identifying cognitive processes involved in second language acquisition. Second, her work set a precedent for understanding the spectrum of language experiences and their complexities, providing essential insight into why even subtle distinctions should be considered and reported when describing bilinguals. Presciently, Bialystok’s early work anticipated current understandings and future directions for bilingualism research, making her sustained contributions to the area an invaluable asset for continued exploration.