Bilingualism Flashcards
bilinguals
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
current estimate of bilingualism in the world
50-70%
traditional psycholinguistics
most research on cognition and language studied monolinguists (English)
idea that only L1 had an impact on cognition
accentedness and grammatical data
the older you are when you learn a second language, the more accented your speech is perceived to be
similar data in grammatical proficiency
traditional view of bilingualism
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
new research goals of bilingualism
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)
three discoveries about bilingualism
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)
cognate
word that has the same form and meaning in two languages (piano), triple-cognates in three languages
recognized more quickly by bilinguals than monolinguals
homograph
word that has the same form but a different meaning in multiple languages (coin)
recognized more slowly by bilinguals than monolinguals
triple-cognate English-Spanish-Japanese picture naming task
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)
parallel activation within context experiment (Libben & Titone)
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)
fixations
time spent on one word
longer fixations = more complex, difficult word
saccades
movements between fixations
regression (eye movement studies)
returning to what you’ve read already
initial stages of comprehension
first fixation duration (the first time you look at the word)
later stages of comprehension
total fixation duration
parallel activation in languages that are drastically different from each other (Morford et al.)
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
event-related potentials and cognate facilitation effect
voltage fluctuations that are time-locked to an event; a reduced N400 indicates facilitation
early Spanish-learners ERPs
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)
classroom-learners vs. immersed-learners experiment
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
grammatical impact of L2 on L1
people with high L2 exposure switch parsing strategies to match L2 (high-attached instead of low-attached)
types of individual differences in language use
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?)
linguistic diversity effect on bilinguals’ brains
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)
how does codeswitching affect language processing?
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
rare codeswitches vs. typical codeswitches
both had a processing cost for noncodeswitchers
only rare codeswitches had a processing cost for codeswitchers because it’s not typical language use
