Content uploaded by John W. Schwieter
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by John W. Schwieter on Apr 11, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Lexical Selection and Competition in Bilinguals
Abstract
Bilingual Lexical Ambiguity Resolution - edited by Roberto R. Heredia January 2020
... Cognate facilitation, in its turn, plays a crucial role in second language acquisition as individuals rely on linguistic interactions between L1 and L2, where words share orthographical, phonological, and semantic representations, thereby accelerating comprehension (Libben & Titone, 2009;Santesteban & Schwieter, 2020). Consequently, a text containing a greater number of words that share orthography, phonology and semantics should, in theory, be easier for the reader to process. ...
... The investigations discussed here highlight the pivotal role of cognate words in second language (L2) reading comprehension. They serve to facilitate and expedite the reading process by fostering interaction between the first language (L1) and the second language (L2) (Libben & Titone, 2009;Santesteban & Schwieter, 2020). Additionally, cognate words contribute to inducing confidence and conviction, particularly benefiting less experienced readers in the comprehension task (DeSouza, 2008). ...
... Similarly, it is relevant for these texts to include cognates, which are words that share spelling (partial or total), phonology, and semantics between languages, facilitating their coactivation (Libben & Titone, 2009;Kleiman, 2011;Finger, 2015;Cop et al., 2017;Finger, Brentano, & Arêas da Luz Fontes, 2018;Santesteban & Schwieter, 2020;Marian et al., 2022). ...
This study aimed at understanding how a pre-reading metacognitive strategy – skimming – would influence the reading performance of eighth and ninth graders from two public schools located in the South of Brazil. Skimming implies a quick analysis of salient words, figures, and activation of stored memories on the topic of the text (Rayner et al., 2016). The specific objectives were to compare the
participants’ scores on the reading of two different text genres: fable and news, which contain different structures, vocabulary, syntax patterns, and thus levels of
processing (Denton et al., 2015). Additionally, we wanted to verify whether the number of cognates would influence reading processing in their second language (L2). Cognates are words that have similar form, sound and meaning across languages (Marian et al., 2022). Therefore, three main hypotheses were raised: i) participants would show a better performance after the skimming instruction; ii) they would show a better performance on the fable, since it has more syntactic consistency; iii) they would show a better performance on the texts that contained a
larger number of cognates (n = 15), compared to the texts with less cognates (n = 06). Participants were adolescents (n = 112) learning English as a second language. Students executed a cloze test (Joly et al., 2014): they filled in the spaces with the word they considered adequate after analyzing the context. Data were inserted on SPSS and a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVA was executed. Results did not show an effect of instruction. Due to that, both groups were united. A new analysis was conducted, using the data from the pretest. We considered as variables genre and cognate quantity. The 2 x 2 ANOVA showed a main effect of cognate quantity, indicating
that the texts that contained more cognates were processed more easily by participants. It was also found an effect of genre, in which participants scored higher in the news compared to the fables. In addition, a significant interaction was also found. The analysis of the within genres ttest showed a cognate quantity effect for both fables and news. Thereby, participants performed better in the news and fables that had more cognates compared to the news and fables that had less cognates in the text. In the t-tests that were executed between genres, there was difference in the texts that contained fewer cognate words. In this case, participants scored higher in the news articles compared to the fables. On the other hand, no difference was found in the texts that had more cognates. In other words, we suggest that the presence of more cognates eliminated the difference between the genres or equated the level of difficulty between them. Those findings, their implications, and the study limitations are discussed.
... For the most part, inhibitory and non-inhibitory bilingual models agree that conceptual information activates both languages during the initial stages of speech production (although see Costa et al., 2017, for a competing view). The activation flows from the semantic network to both lexicons (e.g., Dijkstra et al., 2019;Hermans et al., 1998;Kheder and Kaan, 2019;Santesteban and Schwieter, 2019). The target word is then chosen from the lexicon. ...
... The major assumption we made is that spreading activation affects both languages. This idea is consistent with experimental results and current theories that show both languages become active during speech production (e.g., Dijkstra et al., 2019;Hermans et al., 1998;Kheder and Kaan, 2019;Santesteban and Schwieter, 2019). However, if spreading activation only affects one language, then a non-inhibitory model could still be viable, but with some caveats. ...
Bilingual language control refers to a bilingual's ability to speak exclusively in one language without the unintended language intruding. It has been debated in the literature whether bilinguals need an inhibitory mechanism to control language output or whether a non-inhibitory mechanism can be used. This paper presents mathematical models instantiating the two accounts. The models explain how participants' reaction times in language production (naming) are impacted by across-trial semantic relatedness and consistency of language (same or different language across trials). The models' predictions were compared to data from an experiment in which participants named semantically-related and-unrelated pictures in their first and second language. Results indicate that within-language facilitation effects are abolished after a language switch, supporting the predictions of the Inhibitory Model. However, within-language facilitation was observed over the course of 'stay' trials in which no language switch was required, contrary to the predictions of both models. A second experiment was conducted to determine the origin of this unexpected facilitation, by separating spreading activation effects from incremental learning effects. The results suggest the facilitation observed in Experiment 1 was due to spreading activation. Together, the modeling and data suggest that language switching abolishes spreading activation effects, but cumulative semantic interference (created by incremental learning) is unaffected by language switching. This suggests that (1) within-language control is non-competitive, (2) between-language language control is competitive and (3) learning plays a role in bilingual language speech production.
... This conflict would be especially relevant when the non-target language is the bilingual's dominant language (i.e., their L1, with the target language being their L2; e.g., Hermans et al., 1998) and the two translation equivalents have very different pronunciations (i.e., they are noncognates; e.g., an Italian-English bilingual saying "horse" while ignoring "cavallo," its Italian equivalent). On the other hand, when the translation equivalents have similar pronunciations (i.e., they are cognates, e.g., "elephant" and "elefante"), conflict is presumably reduced, as evidenced by the fact that pictures with cognate names are named faster than pictures with noncognate names (Costa et al., 2000; for evidence from other tasks, see Santesteban & Schwieter, 2020). ...
One of the hottest debates in psychology—whether bilingual-monolingual differences exist in cognitive control—is at a stalemate. Here we propose that the stalemate could be broken by shifting the research focus from whether those differences emerge to why they should. We offer an example of this approach by testing the assumption of current theories of language-control associations that adaptive control is involved in bilingualism, specifically language production. Unbalanced Italian-English bilinguals living in the Milan area completed a Stroop task in their L1 and a picture-naming task in their L2. Both tasks involved a manipulation of the proportion of the type of stimuli that are assumed to require control, i.e., incongruent stimuli in the Stroop task (e.g., the word RED written in blue) and pictures with noncognate names in the picture-naming task (e.g., the picture of a horse, whose Italian name, “cavallo,” has a very different pronunciation). Both confirmatory and exploratory analyses showed a clear dissociation between the two tasks, with the Stroop task producing an interactive pattern indicative of adaptive-control involvement and the picture-naming task failing to produce a similar one. These results suggest that adaptive control may not be involved in bilingual language production and, therefore, may not produce bilingual-monolingual differences in cognitive control. It is hoped that this research will inspire a change in the study of language-control associations, pushing future research efforts towards grounding the assumptions for those associations in empirical evidence.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.3758/s13423-024-02503-6.
... Regarding the bilingual lexical selection, we predict a facilitation effect of the translation equivalents, following , and other recent studies (e.g., Finkbeiner et al. 2006;Santesteban and Schwieter 2020). These studies proposed a language-specific lexical selection of bilingual speakers. ...
For decades, linguists have been working to formulate an objective means of distinguishing dialects from languages, but dialect recognition has largely remained to be a subjective enterprise. Only recently studies proposed a processing-based psycholinguistic approach towards dialect recognition (e.g., Melinger 2018, 2021). These studies argue that dialect words are stored as a co-dependent representation, not as an independent representation of words of bilingual speakers. Based on these studies, we investigated lexical selection and processing mechanisms of bilingual and bidialectal speakers of two underrepresented languages: Oromo and Amharic, using the picture-word interference paradigm. We found independent lexical representations both for the bilingual and the bidialectal groups which implies the involvement of the same cognitive mechanisms in both language and dialect processing. We argue that bidialectal speakers may have flexible lexical representation and selection mechanisms that are dependent on their previous language experience. Hence, we propose a dynamic lexical selection model that accommodates diverse dialect ecologies.
... The predominantly acquisitional perspective is especially salient in the absence of a role for (online) L1 effects in the OM, a daring choice that stands in contrast to their central place in the L2 processing literature (e.g., Santesteban & Schwieter, 2020). While this is undoubtedly a highly controversial point, I am somewhat sympathetic to it, as I have repeatedly argued against the exaggeration of L1 effects on L2 word processing myself (Diependaele et al., 2013;Lemhöfer, Dijkstra, Schriefers, Baayen, Grainger,& Zwitserlood, 2008). ...
... On the one hand, facilitation can be interpreted as a cross-linguistic activation of both languages including an effective selection of the correct representation (Kroll, Bobb & Wodniecka, 2006). On the other hand, interference can also be interpreted as coactivation of the two languages, but in this case, reflecting more difficult selection processes where the competition between representations may not be effectively resolved (e.g., Hermans, 2004; see Santesteban & Schwieter, 2020 for a review). ...
Bilinguals’ two languages seem to be coactivated in parallel during reading, speaking, and listening. However, this coactivation in writing has been scarcely studied. This study aimed to assess orthographic coactivation during spelling-to-dictation. We took advantage of the presence of polyvalent graphemes in Spanish (one phonological representation with two orthographic specifications, e.g., / b /for both the graphemes v and b) to manipulate orthographic congruency. Spanish–English bilinguals were presented with cross-linguistic congruent (mo v ement–mo v imiento) and incongruent words (go v ernment–go b ierno) for a dictation task. The time and accuracy to initiate writing and to type the rest-of-word (lexical and sublexical processing) were recorded in both the native language (L1) and the second language (L2). Results revealed no differences between conditions in monolinguals. Bilinguals showed a congruency and language interaction with better performance for congruent stimuli, which was evident from the beginning of typing in L2. Language coactivation and lexical–sublexical interaction during bilinguals’ writing are discussed.
According to Hopp’s Lexical Bottleneck Hypothesis, difficulties in second language (L2) lexical processing may lead to non-target syntactic computations. In line with this hypothesis, cognates – which are processed faster than non-cognates, as defined by the cognate facilitation effect – can ease L2 syntactic processing. In order to investigate whether cognates additionally facilitate L2 syntax learning, we had two groups of Spanish natives learn an artificial language drawing on Basque. Each group explicitly learnt a set of either Spanish–Basque cognates or non-cognates and a word order grammatical rule. Then, two sentence–picture matching tasks tested their ability to apply the rule (1) with cognates vs. non-cognates and (2) with novel cognate words. Results showed that, in both cases, cognate learners were better at applying the rule than non-cognate learners. This finding suggests that the cognate facilitation effect and its role in the Lexical Bottleneck Hypothesis can be extended from L2 processing to L2 learning. We end by mentioning possible implications of our results for second language teaching in adulthood.
The present study explored bilingual coactivation during natural monolingual sentence-reading comprehension. Native Chinese readers who had learned Japanese as a second language and those who had not learned it at all were tested. The results showed that unrelated Chinese word pairs that shared a common Japanese translation could parafoveally prime each other. Critically, this translation-related preview effect was modulated by the readers’ language-learning experiences. It was found only among the late Chinese–Japanese bilinguals, but not among the monolingual Chinese readers. By setting a novel step, which was testing bilingual coactivation of semantic knowledge in a natural reading scenario without an explicit presentation of L2 words, our results suggest that bilingual word processing can be automatic, unconscious and nonselective. The study reveals an L2-to-L1 influence on readers’ lexical activation during natural sentence reading in an exclusively native context.
In our increasingly multilingual modern world, understanding how languages beyond the first are acquired and processed at a brain level is essential to design evidence-based teaching, clinical interventions and language policy. Written by a team of world-leading experts in a wide range of disciplines within cognitive science, this Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the study of third (and more) language acquisition and processing. It features 30 approachable chapters covering topics such as multilingual language acquisition, education, language maintenance and language loss, multilingual code-switching, ageing in the multilingual brain, and many more. Each chapter provides an accessible overview of the state of the art in its topic, while offering comprehensive access to the specialized literature, through carefully curated citations. It also serves as a methodological resource for researchers in the field, offering chapters on methods such as case studies, corpora, artificial language systems or statistical modelling of multilingual data.
Do nonselected lexical nodes activate their phonological information? Catalan–Spanish bilinguals were asked to name (a) pictures whose names are cognates in the 2 languages (words that are phonologically similar in the 2 languages) and (b) pictures whose names are noncognates in the 2 languages. If nonselected lexical nodes are phonologically encoded, naming latencies should be shorter for cognate words, and because the cognate status of words is only meaningful for bilingual speakers, this difference should disappear when testing monolingual speakers. The results of Experiment 1 fully supported these predictions. In Experiment 2, the difference between cognate and noncognate words was larger when naming in the nondominant language than when naming in the dominant language. The results of the 2 experiments are interpreted as providing support to cascaded activation models of lexical access.
The classic problem of stimulus–response (S–R) compatibility (SRC) is addressed. A cognitive model is proposed that views the stimulus and response sets in S–R ensembles as categories with dimensions that may or may not overlap. If they do overlap, the task may be compatible or incompatible, depending on the assigned S–R mapping. If they do not overlap, the task is noncompatible regardless of the assigned mapping. The overlapping dimensions may be relevant or not. The model provides a systematic account of SRC effects, a taxonomy of simple performance tasks that were hitherto thought to be unrelated, and suggestive parallels between these tasks and the experimental paradigms that have traditionally been used to study attentional, controlled, and automatic processes.
The bilingual advantage hypothesis is difficult to test for many reasons and one is the complexity of the executive functioning (EF) construct. The newest wave of meta‐anlayses on the bilingual advantage has minimized the apples and oranges problem by separately analysing results targeting inhibition, updating of working memory, and switching. This chapter presents in detail the results of a meta‐analysis summarized at a meeting of the Psychonomic Society. A complementary part of the narrative that young adults do not show bilingual advantages is that advantages are consistently observed with children and older adults. The key starting point for predictions of bilingual advantages in EF is the plenitude of evidence consistent with the hypothesis that both languages are co‐activated even when the language context supports only one of them and that some general‐purpose aspect of EF is recruited to facilitate the selection of the target language and avoid intrusions from the non‐target language.
Traditional research in bilingualism has consistently found that switching languages is effortful, placing demands on neural systems of cognitive control. This finding runs counter to most bilinguals’ intuitive experience. We review a body of recent work showing that, in fact, when bilinguals switch languages voluntarily, both the behavioral cost of switching and the associated recruitment of cognitive control areas are greatly reduced or completely eliminated. This suggests that switching languages is not inherently effortful, but rather, particular communicative demands may make it costly. The new evidence also challenges the basic premise underlying the bilingual advantage hypothesis. We articulate a more nuanced version of it, in which the advantage is limited to bilinguals who frequently switch languages based on external constraints.
Because of enduring experience of managing two languages, bilinguals have been argued to develop superior executive functioning compared with monolinguals. Despite extensive investigation, there is, however, no consensus regarding the existence of such a bilingual advantage. Here we synthesized comparisons of bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ performance in six executive domains using 891 effect sizes from 152 studies on adults. We also included unpublished data, and considered the potential influence of a number of study-, task-, and participant-related variables. Before correcting estimates for observed publication bias, our analyses revealed a very small bilingual advantage for inhibition, shifting, and working memory, but not for monitoring or attention. No evidence for a bilingual advantage remained after correcting for bias. For verbal fluency, our analyses indicated a small bilingual disadvantage, possibly reflecting less exposure for each individual language when using two languages in a balanced manner. Moreover, moderator analyses did not support theoretical presuppositions concerning the bilingual advantage. We conclude that the available evidence does not provide systematic support for the widely held notion that bilingualism is associated with benefits in cognitive control functions in adults.
In Speaking, Willem "Pim" Levelt, Director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, accomplishes the formidable task of covering the entire process of speech production, from constraints on conversational appropriateness to articulation and self-monitoring of speech. Speaking is unique in its balanced coverage of all major aspects of the production of speech, in the completeness of its treatment of the entire speech process, and in its strategy of exemplifying rather than formalizing theoretical issues.
Bradford Books imprint
Bilingual language switching has been studied extensively in cued picture naming paradigms, instructing bilinguals when to switch between languages. However, in daily life, bilinguals often switch freely, without external instruction. This study examined when and why bilinguals switch voluntarily. Spanish-Basque bilinguals frequently switched between their languages and their language choice was related to the ease of lexical access. Words that were slow to be accessed in Basque were more often named in Spanish and vice versa. In terms of response times, switching costs were observed not only in the cued but also in the voluntary task. However, while cued switching showed a mixing cost (reflecting the cost associated with using two languages rather than one), a mixing benefit was observed for the voluntary task. This suggests that voluntarily using two languages may be less costly than having to stay in one language.