How do bilinguals identify the language of the words they read?

Abstract

How do bilinguals detect the language of the words they read? Recent electrophysiological research using the masked priming paradigm combining primes and targets from different languages has shown that bilingual readers identify the language of the words within approximately 200 ms. Recent evidence shows that language-detection mechanisms vary as a function of the orthographic markedness of the words (i.e., whether or not a given word contains graphemic combinations that are not legal in the other language). The present study examined how the sub-lexical orthographic regularities of words are used as predictive cues. Spanish-Basque bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals (control group) were tested in an Event-Related Potential (ERP) experiment, using the masked priming paradigm. During the experiment, Spanish targets were briefly preceded by unrelated Spanish or Basque words. Unrelated Basque words could contain bigram combinations that are either plausible or implausible in the target language (Spanish). Results show a language switch effect in the N250 and N400 components for marked Basque primes in both groups, whereas, in the case of unmarked Basque primes, language switch effects were found in bilinguals but not monolinguals. These data demonstrate that statistical orthographic regularities of words play an important role in bilingual language detection, and provide new evidence supporting the assumptions of the BIA+ extended model.

Early processing of orthographic language membership information in bilingual visual word recognition: Evidence from ERPs

“…Finally, a third study compared the effects of Spanish and Basque masked primes on processing of subsequent Spanish targets during electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. Switch costs on the N250 and N400 ERP components were found for target Spanish words preceded by marked Basque primes, but no switch costs were found when targets were preceded by unmarked Basque primes (Casaponsa, Carreiras, & Duñabeitia, 2015). Together, these studies suggest that orthographic language membership information may participate directly in word identification processes by narrowing the search space to a single language.…”

“…If this information is available early during processing prior to lexical access, it could enable early language membership identification (e.g., Hoversten et. al., 2015) and language change detection (Casaponsa et. al., 2015) as well as modulation of cross-language activation (Hoversten et al, 2015; Casaponsa et.…”

“…This assumption has been called into question by recent evidence that language membership information can adjust the depth of processing as a function of top-down task demands (Hoversten et. al., 2015) and that orthographic markedness can constrain cross-language activation (Casaponsa & Duñabeitia, 2014, 2016; Casaponsa et.al., 2015). Results from the current study support the latter account due to the early influence of orthographic cues on the lexico-semantic processing stream.…”

Testing Bilingual Educational Methods: A Plea to End the Language‐Mixing Taboo

“…When bilinguals are asked to switch between languages while speaking, each language switch is accompanied by an increase in the time required to start speaking and by greater chances of making errors as compared to the nonswitching conditions (see, among many others, Costa & Santesteban, ; see also Branzi, Martin, Abutalebi, & Costa, ; Verhoef, Roelofs, & Chwilla, , for electrophysiological and neuroimaging data). Similarly, when bilinguals are presented with written input that involves language switches, they typically display longer recognition times and larger electrophysiological effects for switch as compared to nonswitch trials (e.g., Macizo, Bajo, & Paolieri, ; Van der Meij, Cuetos, Carreiras, & Barber, ), even when switches are not perceived consciously, as is the case in masked priming experiment (e.g., Casaponsa, Carreiras, & Duñabeitia, ; Chauncey, Grainger, & Holcomb, ; Duñabeitia, Dimitropoulou, Uribe‐Etxebarria, Laka, & Carreiras, ).…”

The BEST Dataset of Language Proficiency

“…For this reason, recent years have witnessed an exponential increase in the number of psycholinguistic studies on Basque bi-/multilinguals exploring semantic (e.g., Perea et al, 2008), syntactic (e.g., Díaz et al, 2016), lexical (e.g., Duñabeitia et al, 2010b), and ortho-phonological processes (e.g., Casaponsa et al, 2015). Besides, recent studies have also focused on Basque multilinguals in order to explore language-mediated domain-general cognitive processes such as attention (e.g., see Antón et al, 2014, 2016; Duñabeitia et al, 2014) or learning (e.g., Cenoz, 1998).…”