Mental Simulation in Color‐Implied Sentence Comprehension Differs Across Languages for Late Chinese‐English Bilinguals

The present study examined whether late Chinese‐English bilinguals engage in color‐based mental simulation during first‐language (L1 Chinese) and second‐language (L2 English) sentence comprehension and whether such simulation is modulated by object color typicality. Participants completed a sentence‐picture verification (SPV) task in both Chinese and English using objects with typical and atypical colors. Results revealed a more robust color‐match effect in L1 Chinese than in L2 English, indicating stronger color‐based mental simulation during L1 sentence comprehension. Across languages, participants responded faster to typically colored objects than to atypically colored objects, demonstrating an overall facilitative effect of object color typicality on reaction time. Moreover, object color typicality influenced the color‐match effect differently across languages. In L1 Chinese, significant color‐match effects were observed for both typical and atypical objects, whereas in L2 English, a significant color‐match effect was observed only for atypical objects. These findings suggest that color‐based mental simulation is more robust in L1 than in L2 and that the influence of object color typicality on such simulation differs across languages, providing further evidence for cross‐linguistic variation in color‐based mental simulation among late Chinese‐English bilinguals.