ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the process of adapting monolingual performance-based models and frameworks to account for bilingualism are described through illustrative examples. First, the development that led to two of the most prominent models of bilingual processing, the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) and Revised Hierarchical Models (RHM), are described. The BIA is an example of how existing models accelerate the pace of discovery but do not afford answers to questions unique to bilingualism. The RHM serves as an example of how the cognitive architecture from varieties of language experience that only exist for bilinguals must be considered in modeling human memory. The second half of the chapter describes the transformative results of the endeavor of testing existing hypotheses about the nature of language to bilingual processing. The conclusion is that any hypothesis regarding language processing in general is not fully tested unless it has been applied to bi- and multilingualism.
