Memory and Cognition in Bi/Multilingual Minds: Mechanisms, Models, and Developmental Pathways

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue explores how bi/multilingual language experience shapes memory and cognition across the lifespan. Moving beyond the bilingual advantage debate, recent work reveals that managing multiple languages continuously tunes working and episodic memory, attentional control, and neural efficiency. We invite interdisciplinary contributions that investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying language control, cross-linguistic transfer, and memory consolidation in bi/multilinguals. Studies employing behavioural, neuroimaging, computational, or longitudinal methods are especially welcome, as are theoretical and review papers that integrate these perspectives. By viewing bilingualism as a dynamic system of experience-dependent adaptation, the Special Issue aims to clarify how memory and cognition interact to support learning, representation, and flexibility in multilingual minds.

Background and history of this topic: Over the past two decades, research on bilingualism has transformed our understanding of how experience with multiple languages shapes the architecture and dynamics of human cognition. Early debates about a bilingual advantage in executive function have evolved into more nuanced investigations of how diverse language experiences modulate memory systems, attentional control, and learning efficiency. Studies now consider multilingualism not as a static trait but as a continuum of experience that interacts with age, proficiency, and sociolinguistic context to influence both short-term processing and long-term memory consolidation. Emerging frameworks link these patterns to neural plasticity, adaptive control, and representational overlap across languages, offering powerful insights into the general mechanisms of memory and cognition.

Aim and scope of the Special Issue: This Special Issue seeks to advance interdisciplinary understanding of the interconnections between memory, cognition, and language experience in bi/multilingual populations. We invite research that probes the cognitive and neural mechanisms underpinning language control, cross-linguistic transfer, and learning, and that examines how these processes evolve across development and the lifespan. The goal is to integrate evidence from experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, and computational modelling to illuminate how managing multiple languages reshapes cognitive systems, memory functions, and neural efficiency.

Cutting-edge research: Recent advances have come from neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods mapping memory control interactions in bilingual language switching; computational and connectionist models simulating cross-linguistic transfer and lexical consolidation; and longitudinal and lifespan studies exploring how working memory and inhibitory control adapt to sustained bilingual experience. Other innovative work employs machine learning approaches to model variability in cognitive performance across multilingual speakers or uses educational and ecological designs to examine real-world language use and cognitive flexibility. Collectively, this new wave of research reframes bilingualism as a dynamic system in which memory and cognition continuously interact with language experience.

What kind of papers we are soliciting: We invite contributions that explore the interplay between memory and cognition in bi/multilingual contexts, including the following:

• Empirical studies using behavioural, neuroimaging, or computational approaches;
• Cross-linguistic and developmental studies linking language use to working or episodic memory;
• Lifespan or longitudinal investigations of cognitive adaptation to multilingual experience;
• Theoretical or review papers integrating models of memory and bilingual processing;
• Methodological innovations addressing experience-based variability or neurocognitive modelling.

By foregrounding bilingualism as a natural experiment in cognitive and memory plasticity, this Special Issue aims to consolidate diverse strands of research and chart new directions for understanding how the multilingual mind encodes, retrieves, and adapts across languages.

Dr. Meesha Warmington
Guest Editor

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• bilingualism
• multilingualism
• memory and cognition
• language control
• working memory
• episodic memory
• cross-linguistic transfer
• executive function
• neurocognitive mechanisms
• computational modeling