Bilingualism

Question 1

bilinguals

Answer 1

all individuals who use more than one language - they are differentiated by their proficiency, dominance, age of acquisition, where they live, their goals of language use

Question 2

current estimate of bilingualism in the world

Answer 2

50-70%

Question 3

traditional psycholinguistics

Answer 3

most research on cognition and language studied monolinguists (English)
idea that only L1 had an impact on cognition

Question 4

accentedness and grammatical data

Answer 4

the older you are when you learn a second language, the more accented your speech is perceived to be
similar data in grammatical proficiency

Question 5

traditional view of bilingualism

Answer 5

late bilinguals have a full native L1 and a strange L2
bilinguals are monolinguals in L1
L1 can impact L2, but not the other way around

Question 6

new research goals of bilingualism

Answer 6

investigating the biological basis on bilingualism
language learning occurs at all ages and is dynamic (greater plasticity)
bilingualism is a lens to study new aspects of cognition (impact of experience on the brain)

Question 7

three discoveries about bilingualism

Answer 7

both languages are active and competing (parallel activation/coactivation)
L1 and L2 can influence each other
individual variability in language experience (context, distribution of languages in every day lives)

Question 8

cognate

Answer 8

word that has the same form and meaning in two languages (piano), triple-cognates in three languages
recognized more quickly by bilinguals than monolinguals

Question 9

homograph

Answer 9

word that has the same form but a different meaning in multiple languages (coin)
recognized more slowly by bilinguals than monolinguals

Question 10

triple-cognate English-Spanish-Japanese picture naming task

Answer 10

lexical information was activated in target and non-target languages
triple-cognates = you can retrieve the label of the image more quickly = faster at naming the picture (cognate facilitation effect)

Question 11

parallel activation within context experiment (Libben & Titone)

Answer 11

cognates and homographs in low constraint (target word is not predictable) and high constraint (context narrows the possibilities - should eliminate facilitation and interference effects)
early-stage/low constraint = facilitation for cognates, interference for homographs
early-stage/high constraint = facilitation and interference
late-stage/low constraint = facilitation and interference
late-stage/high constraint = no facilitation of interference (no parallel activation)

Question 12

fixations

Answer 12

time spent on one word
longer fixations = more complex, difficult word

Question 13

saccades

Answer 13

movements between fixations

Question 14

regression (eye movement studies)

Answer 14

returning to what you’ve read already

Question 15

initial stages of comprehension

Answer 15

first fixation duration (the first time you look at the word)

Question 16

later stages of comprehension

Answer 16

total fixation duration

Question 17

parallel activation in languages that are drastically different from each other (Morford et al.)

Answer 17

using semantic relatedness task and phonologically related/unrelated words in ASL - Ps faster to judge relatedness when words were phonologically related (converge) than not (conflict) = languages are both active and competing

Question 18

event-related potentials and cognate facilitation effect

Answer 18

voltage fluctuations that are time-locked to an event; a reduced N400 indicates facilitation

Question 19

early Spanish-learners ERPs

Answer 19

L2 learners had a reduced N400 for cognates vs. monolinguals - their newly acquired Spanish was influencing their L1 knowledge (even if behaviorally, there was no facilitation)

Question 20

classroom-learners vs. immersed-learners experiment

Answer 20

verbal fluency task in L1 and L2: immersed learners are producing less English words and more Spanish words than classroom learners = L1 being suppressed by learning a new language

Question 21

grammatical impact of L2 on L1

Answer 21

people with high L2 exposure switch parsing strategies to match L2 (high-attached instead of low-attached)

Question 22

types of individual differences in language use

Answer 22

predominant language in environment (immersed?)
habits of language use (keep languages separate or code-switching)
contextual linguistic diversity (are they surrounded by bilinguals, do they get to use both languages?)

Question 23

linguistic diversity effect on bilinguals’ brains

Answer 23

these people are monitoring their environment for opportunities to use their language, using context clues
higher connectivity in brain areas used for monitoring (anterior cingulate cortex and putamen)

Question 24

how does codeswitching affect language processing?

Answer 24

experiment looking at people with compartmentalized languages and people who used languages interchangeably/opportunistically
non-codeswitchers had a processing cost for sentences that switch mid-sentence, but codeswitchers had none

Question 25

rare codeswitches vs. typical codeswitches

Answer 25

both had a processing cost for noncodeswitchers
only rare codeswitches had a processing cost for codeswitchers because it’s not typical language use