Phonological coactivation in the bilinguals’ two languages: Evidence from the color naming task

Abstract

We evaluate whether bilinguals activate the phonology of their first language (L1) when they speak in their second language (L2). In Experiment 1, Spanish–English (L1–L2) bilinguals performed a color naming task in which they named the color of pictures in L2 while the phonological relationship between the color names and picture names in L1 was evaluated. The bilinguals were slower when color names and picture names were phonologically related in L1 relative to a control condition in which they were unrelated. The same pattern of results was obtained in Experiment 2 when bilinguals with less L2 proficiency were evaluated. These results suggest that bilinguals coactivated the phonology of their two languages and that the phonology in L1 influenced the production of speech in L2. This finding is explained in terms of cascade models of bilingual language production.

Examining Co-activation Through Cross-Linguistic Influence among Bilinguals in Spoken Language Processing: Evidence from Eye Movements

“…The need for inhibition would therefore suggest that the two languages in the bilingual's brain are always active to some extent even in situations that did not require the use or activation of one of the languages as in the current experiment. Findings are consistent with the explanation of Bialystok (2017) as well as Blumenfeld & Marian (2013), along with past studies conducted by Marian and Spivey (2003) and Macizo (2016) establishing the co-activation state of the two languages in the bilinguals brain.…”

“…According to Bialystok (2017), the studies of cross-linguistic influences have proven that in the bilingual's mind, the two languages are always active to some extent and would compete for selection. The research carried out by Macizo (2016) has illustrated this by concluding that bilinguals co-activate the phonology in both languages in which L1 influences L2. Such findings have contrasted early research studies revealing the selective or independent nature of activation (Watkins & Peynirioglu, 1983;Gerard & Scarborough, 1989;Ransdell & Fischler, 1987).…”

Cascadedness in Chinese written word production

“…Finally, we argue that the alternative account of our effect would in fact predict an inhibitory effect of relatedness on color naming latencies, rather than the observed facilitatory effect, because object names would need to be suppressed before color writing can proceed, which should be more difficult in the related than in the unrelated case. Relevant evidence comes from the observation that bilinguals find it harder to carry out spoken color naming in their second language when color and object are phonologically related in their first language (Macizo, 2015 ), which is predicted on the claim that co-activated representations which are primed via phonological overlap in L1 are more difficult to suppressed than unrelated representations. Having said that, we acknowledge that our case for cascadedness (rather than the alternative account in terms of “multiple serial” processing sketched above) would be stronger if orthographic priming had been found not only at strongly “negative” SOAs (in which information about object identify precedes arrival of information about the target color) but also under shorter SOAs (ideally, under SOA = 0 ms).…”

A performance comparison between the two language versions of the Affective Go/No‐Go test: A randomised crossover study

“…Thus, any possible order effect of two languages might have gone unnoticed in our analysis. Second, a previous work suggested that bilinguals have a different language processing system than monolinguals because both languages are simultaneously activated and reciprocally influenced by each other (Macizo, ). Therefore, it may be possible that the comparable performance between the two language versions of the AGN test is partly driven by the co‐activation and convergence of two different languages.…”