Date of Completion

Spring 5-1-2026

Thesis Advisor(s)

Adrián Garcia-Sierra

Honors Major

Mathematics Education

Disciplines

Cognitive Science | Mathematics | Syntax

Abstract

The implementation of sheltered education programs has become increasingly prevalent in schools as new research in second language acquisition emerges. Yet despite this growing attention to ESL instructional practice, far less is known about the cognitive processes that underlie how bilingual students engage with academic content. This study investigates cross-domain structural priming between mathematical and linguistic processing in monolingual and bilingual individuals, focusing on how bilingual experience influences syntactic attachment preferences. Prior research suggests that mathematical and linguistic structures share underlying cognitive representations, and that exposure to structures in one domain can influence processing in another. Additionally, bilingualism has been shown to affect syntactic parsing strategies, raising questions about how language experience modulates cross-domain priming effects. In a behavioral experiment, participants (N = 150) including English monolinguals, Spanish monolinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and English-Spanish bilinguals completed a math-to-sentence priming task. Participants were presented with left-branching or right branching mathematical expressions followed by ambiguous sentences requiring attachment interpretation. Proportions of left and right branching interpretations were compared to a neutral baseline condition using two-proportion z-tests. Results revealed significant cross-domain priming across all groups, with participants more likely to produce sentence interpretations matching preceding mathematical structures. English monolinguals demonstrated priming effects alongside a strong baseline preference for right-branching interpretations. Spanish monolinguals showed significant priming with more balanced attachment preferences. Among bilinguals, priming varied by language dominance and testing condition: Spanish-English bilinguals tested in English showed strong right-branching effects, whereas those tested in Spanish showed bidirectional priming. English-Spanish bilinguals demonstrated strong left-branching priming effects.

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