Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: Evidence for nonselective lexical access.

Abstract

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. The present study investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a L2 lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and non-identical cognate words (e.g. banaan -banana) presented in isolation than control words.A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment using eyetracking, we showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation, but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals. Keywords: bilingualism, visual word recognition, sentence context, cognate Bilingual Word Recognition in Sentences 3Visual Word Recognition by Bilinguals in a Sentence Context: Evidence for Non-selective Lexical AccessDuring the last decade, research on visual word recognition in bilinguals has been dominated by studies investigating whether both languages are processed by functionally and structurally independent systems or not. The most intuitively appealing theory about this issue would probably be that bilinguals have two separate language systems and lexicons: one for the native language (L1) and one for the second language ( L2). However, a lot of evidence has been gathered against this hypothesis: interlingual interactions have been observed at different representational levels, even when bilinguals are processing unilingual sets of words and therefore have no reason to keep an irrelevant language active. Thus far, the majority of these studies have focused on orthographic lexical representations. They have consistently shown that access to these representations is not language specific. Orthographic lexical representations from L2 are accessed during (and interact early with) L1 reading and vice versa (e.g., Dijkstra, Timmermans, & Schriefers, 2000;Dijkstra, Grainger, & Van Heuven, 1999;Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002; for a recent review, see Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002). Recently, a few studies have shown that the languageindependent lexical access claim also holds for phonological representations. For example, Duyck (2005) has shown that masked nonword primes are coded through L1 grapheme conversion rules when reading L2 target words (and vice versa), suggesting that phonological representations from one language may be activated when reading in another language (see also Jared & Kroll, 2001).Because the ongoing debate has almost been settled in favor of this language-independent lexical access hypothesis (for both orthographic and phonological lexical representations), it may be time to put into question the ecological validity and ...

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

“…To the extent that translation equivalents might become active in language comprehension, this should be relatively less disruptive given that both activate the intended meaning. Previous studies have led to the hypothesis that semantically constraining context may act to reduce, or even eliminate entirely (Schwartz & Kroll, 2006;van Hell & de Groot, 2008;Libben & Titone, 2009) the effects of dual-language activation (but see Duyck et al, 2007;van Assche et al, in press, and Experiment 2 of this study).…”

“…Constraint and frequency have also figured prominently in the literature on bilingual language processing (another subfield of psycholinguistics which exhibits a less obvious division of researchers into those who study comprehension versus production). A widely accepted assumption in models of bilingual language processing is that bilinguals cannot shut off one language completely to effectively function like monolinguals (e.g., Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002;Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot, & Schreuder, 1998;Duyck, Van Assche, Drieghe, & Hartsuiker, 2007;Van Assche, Duyck, Hartsuiker, & Diependaele, 2009; for reviews see Costa, 2005;Kroll, Bobb, Misra, & Guo, 2008;La Heij, 2005;Sebastián-Gallés & Kroll, 2003). The presence of dual-language activation could place bilinguals at a disadvantage when compared to monolinguals, particularly in the domain of language production, where a single language must be chosen for response, so that translation equivalents could function as competitors.…”

Visual Cues for Language Selection in Bilinguals

“…Duyck, Van Assche, Drieghe, and Hartsuiker (2007) argued that if it does, effects of cross-linguistic overlap (i.e., cognate status) should disappear once cognates are embedded in a sentence context (also see Schwartz & Kroll, 2006;Van Hell & De Groot, 2008). Duyck et al first presented their subjects, Dutch-English bilinguals, with English-Dutch cognates and English control words in an English lexical decision experiment.…”

“…Hartsuiker -visual cues for language in bilingualism 9 Importantly, the Duyck et al (2007) study was conducted in L2 English, and the subjects were clearly dominant in their L1 Dutch. One might argue that whereas one can never turn off a dominant L1 while processing L2, it should be possible to render L1 language non-selective.…”

Another cup of TEE? The processing of second language near-cognates in first language reading

“…Another relevant factor seems to be L2 proficiency: less skilled L2 speakers are more susceptible to cognate effects in L2 than very proficient ones (Bultena et al, 2014;Libben & Titone, 2009). Finally, the degree of overlap between the two cognate readings matters with respect to how they are processed: orthographically non-identical cognates (socalled near-cognates) generally give rise to (sometimes disproportionally) smaller cognate effects than identical ones do (Dijkstra, Miwa, Brummelhuis, Sappelli, & Baayen, 2010;Duyck, van Assche, Drieghe, & Hartsuiker, 2007).…”