FOR 5905: Bilingual Flexibility – The Psychology of Language Control
is a DFG-funded Research Unit hosted at RWTH Aachen University and Uniklinik Aachen. Our interdisciplinary team investigates a central question in psycholinguistics: how do bilinguals select, regulate, and control their languages?
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In our globalized world, bilingualism has become widespread, with direct implications for everyday communication, education, the workplace, and clinical practice. Yet many traditional concepts and models in psycholinguistics treat a bilingual speaker’s language balance – how readily each language can be accessed and used – as a stable trait and struggle to account for the remarkable variability and adaptability of bilingual language performance across contexts, tasks, and populations.
The Research Unit Bilingual Flexibility – The Psychology of Language Control (FOR 5905) addresses this gap by investigating both the short-term, situational demands – the task at hand and the social context – that shape moment-to-moment language use, and the long-term learning and developmental processes that shape a speaker’s language balance over a lifetime.
