Ana Rita Sá Leite- Doctor of Psychology
- Postdoc Researcher at University of Göttingen
Ana Rita Sá Leite
- Doctor of Psychology
- Postdoc Researcher at University of Göttingen
Studying the interplay of syntax with other lexical levels of representation, but mostly focused in gender processing!
About
24
Publications
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Introduction
Hi there! If you're interested in the acquisition and processing of grammatical gender or noun classes across the world's languages, let's collaborate! 😊
I'm also actively involved in projects exploring the role of emotions in grammar processing (challenging restrictive modularity ideas!) and cross-linguistic interaction (CLI) in various aspects of syntax.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2022 - present
Position
- PostDoc Position
Description
- Exploring the differences between the masculine, feminine and neuter gender values in inanimate nouns, tackling the causes between the cognitive masculine bias by comparing Spanish and German monolingual and bilingual speakers.
March 2022 - August 2022
April 2021 - July 2021
Position
- PhD Student
Description
- Conducting picture-word interference tasks combined with electroencephalographical techniques in native speakers of Dutch with prof. Kristin Lemhöfer.
Education
September 2016 - July 2017
September 2011 - July 2015
Publications
Publications (24)
The Multilingual Picture (MultiPic) database has been instrumental in advancing psycholinguistic research by providing standardized norms for colored images across multiple languages. However, many lesser-studied languages remain underrepresented. This study introduces the Galician MultiPic dataset, which provides norms for naming agreement and con...
Psycholinguistics, as a discipline that combines psychology and linguistics, studies the neural bases and cognitive mechanisms underlying language acquisition and processing. When we examined the psycholinguistic studies carried out on the languages spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, we realized that the studies conducted on Galician are scarce in co...
Languages can express grammatical gender through different ortho-phonological regularities present in nouns (e.g., the cues “-o” and “-a” for the masculine and the feminine respectively in Italian, Portuguese, or Spanish). The term “gender transparency” was coined to describe these regularities (Bates et al., 1995). In gendered languages, we can he...
In contrast to language production, there are few comprehension models of the representation and use of grammatical gender in long-term memory. To bridge this gap, we conducted a systematic review of empirical studies on the role of gender-form regularities in the recognition of nouns in isolation and within sentences. The results of a final sample...
There is no semantically driven reason for a noun to be considered masculine or feminine. This arbitrariness creates situations in which the gender value of a given noun varies from one language to another (i.e., heterogeneric nouns such as “tree”, which is masculine in German [“Baum”], but feminine in Portuguese [“árvore”]). Dozens of works have s...
Research in bilingualism faces a significant challenge: grammatical gender. This aspect poses difficulties in studying its retrieval during real-time language processing and stands as one of the most formidable features to acquire in a second language. In this presentation, I explain the essential methodologies for investigating gender retrieval in...
The cross-linguistic gender congruency effect (GCE; a facilitation on gender retrieval for translations of the same gender) is a robust phenomenon analysed almost exclusively with late bilinguals. However, it is important to ascertain whether it is modulated by age of acquisition (AoA) and language proficiency. We asked 64 early and late bilinguals...
The aim of the study was to explore the nature of the gender-congruency effect, characterized by a facilitation on the processing of congruent words in grammatical gender. Moreover, we explored whether resemblances between gender identities and gender attitudes with grammatical gender modulated lexical processing. We designed a gender-priming parad...
The picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm allows us to delve into the process of lexical access in language production with great precision. It creates situations of interference between target pictures and superimposed distractor words that participants must consciously ignore to name the pictures. Yet, although the PWI paradigm has offered num...
The study of the representation and processing of grammatical gender during language production has encountered mixed results regarding which conditions must be met to observe gender effects and whether these reflect the selection of gender values or competition between elements of agreement. The answer seems to depend on the number of determiners...
Grammatical gender retrieval during language production has been largely addressed through the picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm, with the aim of capturing the so-called gender congruency effect (GCE). In the PWI paradigm, participants name target pictures while ignoring superimposed written distractor nouns. The GCE shows faster responses w...
Grammatical gender processing during language production has classically been studied using the so-called picture-word interference (PWI) task. In this procedure, participants are presented with pictures they must name using target nouns while ignoring superimposed written distractor nouns. Variations in response times are expected depending on the...
The study of grammatical gender representation and processing during noun lexical access has raised great debates in regards of the mandatory character of agreement contexts for gender to be retrieved, and the role of morpho-phonology and gender values in gender encoding. Although results with Germanic languages suggest that agreement contexts are...
Classical models of speech production (e.g., WEAVER++) state that an agreement context is necessary for the grammatical gender of a noun to be selected. Evidence supporting this comes from studies with Germanic languages using a picture-word interference paradigm (PWIP), in which participants are asked to name a picture using a target bare noun whi...
In the study of gender representation and processing in bilinguals, two contrasting perspectives exist: integrated versus autonomous (Costa, Kovacic, Franck, & Caramazza, 2003, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 181-200). In the former, cross-linguistic interactions during the selection of grammatical gender values are expected; in the latter...
The way grammatical gender is processed during noun production in the picture-word interference paradigm (PWIP; participants have to name aloud a picture while ignoring a superimposed distractor noun) has led to mixed results. Whereas speakers of (mostly) Germanic languages show a Gender-Congruency effect (GC; faster responses to same-gender pictur...
In this review paper, we analyse how grammatical gender is represented and processed in the bilingual mind. To that end, we review the data from 13 existing behavioural studies with mainly late second language (L2) learners on the so-called gender congruency (GC) effect (a facilitated processing for translation equivalents with the same gender in c...
Studies on gender processing with Germanic/Slavic languages using a Picture-Word Interference Paradigm (PWIP), in which participants are asked to name pictures by producing a Definite Determiner [DD] + a noun while ignoring a superimposed distractor word, found faster responses for pictures gender-congruent with distractors than for incongruent one...
This study reviewed research on the processing of homonymous and polysemous words in bilingual individuals and assessed its contribution to knowledge of ambiguous word processing, representation, and learning in such individuals. Available evidence supports the mutual influence of each language at the lexical and the semantic level. Specifically, r...
En este trabajo se revisan los estudios que han investigado el procesamiento, la representación y el aprendizaje de palabras ambiguas (homónimas y polisémicas) en individuos bilingües. La evidencia disponible apoya la influencia mutua entre las dos lenguas del bilingüe, tanto en un nivel léxico como semántico. Más concretamente, destaca el impacto...
The representation of grammatical gender in the lexicon and the retrieval of it during the processing of nouns are controversial issues in the literature. Indeed, while recent studies in Romance languages using the picture-word interference paradigm (where participants have to name the image presented on the screen as quickly and accurately as poss...
