Bilingual social cognition: Investigating the relationship between bilingual language experience and mentalizing

Mentalizing is a dynamic form of social cognition that is strengthened by language experience and proficiency. Similarly, bilingual children and adults consistently outperform monolinguals on traditional tasks. Here, we probe the relationship between bilingual language experience and mentalizing by investigating first (L1) versus second language (L2) mentalizing, and whether individual differences in language diversity continuously pattern with mentalizing judgments. We tested sixty-one bilingual adults on an on-line reading and inference task that compared mental state and logical inferences. We find that all readers judge mental state inferences as less coherent than logical inferences, but L2 readers make this judgment for mental state inferences faster than L1 readers. Moreover, L2 readers overmentalize logical inferences compared to L1 readers. In addition, greater language diversity patterns with higher mentalizing for mental state inferences across all readers. Together, we find evidence in favor of a positive relationship between bilingual language experience and mentalizing.