Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification

Abstract

Bilinguals named pictures in their dominant language more slowly (and with more errors) than did monolinguals. In contrast, bilinguals named the same pictures as quickly as did monolinguals on the fifth presentation (in Experiment 2) and classified them (as human made or natural) as quickly and accurately as did monolinguals (in Experiment 1). In addition, bilinguals retrieved English picture names more quickly if they knew the name in both Spanish and English (on the basis of a translation test that bilinguals completed after the timed tasks), and monolingual response times for the same materials suggested that this finding was not obtained simply because names that were easier to translate were easier in general. These findings suggest that bilinguals differ from monolinguals at a postconceptual processing level, that implicit activation of lexical representations in the nontarget language can facilitate retrieval in the target language, and that being bilingual is analogous to having a lexicon full of lower frequency words, relative to monolinguals.

Frequency Drives Lexical Access in Reading but not in Speaking: The Frequency-Lag Hypothesis

“…By virtue of using each language only part of the time, bilinguals have used word forms particular to each language relatively less frequently than monolinguals -i.e., bilingualism entails a frequency-lag (Gollan & Silverberg, 2001;Gollan et al, 2002;Gollan et al, 2005;Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008;Sandoval, Gollan, Ferreira, & Salmon, 2010; for similar ideas see Ivanova & Costa, 2008;Lehtonen, & Laine, 2003;Mägiste, 1979;Nicoladis, Palmer, & Marentette, 2007;Pearson et al, 1997;Ransdell & Fischler, 1987). Supporting this account, the bilingual disadvantage is especially large for retrieval of low-frequency words, whereas little or no bilingual disadvantage is found for production of high-frequency words.…”

Emotionality in a second language: It's a matter of time

“…Further evidence for delayed lexical access in bilinguals stems from studies using picture naming tasks both in L1 and L2 (Gollan et al, 2008, see Hanulová et al, 2011. These studies consistently report a bilingual disadvantage for naming, with proficient bilingual participants naming pictures significantly more slowly in their non dominant language (either L1 or L2 Gollan et al, 2005) as compared to monolinguals. In one study, slower naming has been demonstrated even for the first/dominant language of the bilingual speakers when compared with monolingual speakers (Ivanova & Costa, 2008).…”

Decomposition of repetition priming components in picture naming.

“…Repetition priming effects tend to be smaller for picture classification than for picture naming (Durso & Johnson, 1979;Gabrieli et al, 1999;Gollan et al, 2005). Previous research has shown that semantic classification of pictures facilitates later picture naming (e.g., Carroll et al, 1985) and that picture naming facilitates later semantic classification (Vaidya et al, 1998).…”