Final answer:
Research indicates that bilingual individuals access both of their languages when they speak. Studies in cross-language speech perception, color perception across languages, and academic performance in bilingual education provide evidence supporting this phenomenon.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question relates to bilingual individuals, specifically “balance bilinguals”, who are able to use two languages interchangeably without significant effort. The inquiry is for examples of experiments that demonstrate how these individuals access both of their languages whenever they speak. This phenomenon suggests that bilinguals do not switch off one language entirely while using the other, but rather, both languages are active and may influence their speech production and comprehension.
One prominent study that gives evidence to this is an experiment on “cross-language speech perception” by Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984). This experiment demonstrated that infants can distinguish sounds from both their native language and foreign languages, indicating early multiple language processing abilities. Another example is the study of color perception across languages by Berlin & Kay (1969), which suggests that despite different lexical terms, languages do not constrain cognitive abilities, hinting at a shared cognitive processing for languages. Additionally, the research conducted by Slavin et al. (2008) at Johns Hopkins University found that students who were taught in both their native tongue and English performed better academically than those taught only in English, showing they engage both languages in learning environments.