The bilingual L2 advantage in recognition memory

To better understand the mechanisms by which bilingual proficiency impacts memory processes, two recognition memory experiments were conducted with matched monolingual and bilingual samples. In Experiment 1, monolingual speakers of English and Spanish studied high- and low-frequency words under full attention or cognitive load conditions. In Experiment 2, Spanish–English bilingual participants studied high- and low-frequency words under full-attention conditions in each language. For both monolinguals and bilinguals, low-frequency words were better recognized than high-frequency words. The central new findings were that bilingual recognition was more accurate in the less fluent language (L2) than in the more fluent language (L1) and that bilingual L2 recognition was more accurate than monolingual recognition. The bilingual L2 advantage parallels word frequency effects in recognition and is attributed to the greater episodic distinctiveness of L2 words, relative to L1 words.     

Revisiting Fluctuations in L2 Article Choice in L1-Korean L2-English Learners

The current study investigated the distinction of L2 (second language) English article choice sensitivity in fifty-three L1-Korean L2-English learners in semantic contexts. In the context of English as a foreign language, the participants were divided into two groups based on grammatical ability as determined by their performance on a cloze test. In addition, a forced-choice elicitation test and a writing production test were administered to assess, respectively, the participants’ receptive and productive article choice abilities. Regardless of grammatical ability, the results disclosed the overuse of the indefinite a in the [\(+\)definite, ?specific] context and the definite the in the [?definite, \(+\)specific] context on the forced-choice elicitation test. In the [\(+\)definite, \(+\)specific] and [?definite, ?specific] contexts, however, the overuse of either the indefinite a or the definite the, respectively, was less likely. Furthermore, it was revealed on the writing test that the participants more accurately used the definite the than the indefinite a, and they were also found to unreasonably omit more articles than to add or substitute articles on the writing production test. The findings across the two tests indicate that L1-Korean L2-English learners are more likely to have intrinsic difficulties transferring their L1 noun phrase (NP) knowledge to L2 NP knowledge owing to structural discrepancies and complex interfaces between L1 NPs and L2 NPs with respect to syntactic, semantic and pragmatic/discourse language subsystems.     

Deaf readers’ response to syntactic complexity: Evidence from self-paced reading

This study was designed to determine the feasibility of using self-paced reading methods to study deaf readers and to assess how deaf readers respond to two syntactic manipulations. Three groups of participants read the test sentences: deaf readers, hearing monolingual English readers, and hearing bilingual readers whose second language was English. In Experiment 1, the participants read sentences containing subject-relative or object-relative clauses. The test sentences contained semantic information that would influence online processing outcomes (Traxler, Morris, & Seely Journal of Memory and Language 47: 69–90, 2002; Traxler, Williams, Blozis, & Morris Journal of Memory and Language 53: 204–224, 2005). All of the participant groups had greater difficulty processing sentences containing object-relative clauses. This difficulty was reduced when helpful semantic cues were present. In Experiment 2, participants read active-voice and passive-voice sentences. The sentences were processed similarly by all three groups. Comprehension accuracy was higher in hearing readers than in deaf readers. Within deaf readers, native signers read the sentences faster and comprehended them to a higher degree than did nonnative signers. These results indicate that self-paced reading is a useful method for studying sentence interpretation among deaf readers.     

Foreign Language Effect and Psychological Distance

Does using a foreign language result in forming different moral decisions than using our mother tongue? Two studies were conducted to investigate whether there is a relationship between foreign language effects (differences between native vs. foreign language conditions) and psychological distance. Study 1 tested four moral dilemmas adapted from Greene et al. (Cognition 107: 1144–1155, 2008). Non-fluent Korean–English bilingual participants (N = 161) indicated decisions regarding four moral dilemmas in either Korean or English languages. The study found that for personal moral conflict situations, in which emotion and automatic intuition were more important than deliberation, there were significant differences in ratios of utilitarian decisions between the native language (L1) and the foreign language (L2) conditions. The participants tended to make more utilitarian decisions in L2 than in L1, which implies reduced emotionality in L2. Study 2 examined whether the psychological distance increased using the foreign language (English) utilizing an automatic self-test. Nonproficient Korean–English bilinguals (N = 26) formed associations between three kinds of geometric shapes (ellipses, rectangles and triangles) and three kinds of labels (‘me’, ‘friends’ and ‘others’). The results of the study found the self-bias effect decreased when labels were presented in the foreign language (in English). This implies that the foreign language effect resulted from the reduced emotional response, and deliberation in decision making which may result from increased psychological distance.     

A Comparison of a Subjective and Statistical Method for Establishing Score Comparability in an Organizational Culture Survey

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to compare the results of a subjective and a statistical method of detecting non-comparable items in 14 language-translated forms of a survey measuring organizational culture.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Data were obtained from a large multinational organization using a 60-item organizational culture survey. Each of 14 language-translated forms were administered to members of their respective language groups and compared to the original English (United States) form. Subjective reviews were conducted using fluent bilingual organizational members whom flagged items they did not believe were comparable. Statistical analyses using an item response theory (IRT) approach were used to detect problematic items from 14 samples with sizes ranging from 304 to 3,014. Detection patterns from these two approaches were compared.

Findings

The subjective approach identified far less items as problematic and did not agree with the statistical approach.

Implications

Our results suggest that the subjective approach as a pre-screening adaptation procedure has little added value over a careful translation/back-translation procedure.

Originality/Value

The use of language-adapted organizational surveys has become increasingly important to multinational organizations. In examining scores from such surveys the establishment of score comparability is essential. IRT analyses are often used to determine whether scores are comparable across language translations. It is also common for subjective reviews of item content to be utilized prior to statistical techniques to determine if the translated items are comparable to the original form. No research known to authors has compared modern statistical and subjective approaches to addressing these issues.     

Reconsidering the role of language in medicine

Background

Despite an expansive literature on communication in medicine, the role of language is dealt with mostly indirectly. Recently, narrative medicine has emerged as a strategy to improve doctor-patient communication and integrate patient perspectives. However, even in this field which is predicated on language use, scholars have not specifically reflected on how language functions in medicine.

Methods

In this theoretical paper, the authors consider how different models of language use, which have been proposed in the philosophical literature, might be applied to communication in medicine. In particular, the authors contrast the traditional, indexical thesis of language with new models that focus on interpretation instead of standardization.

Results

The authors demonstrate how paying close attention to the role of language in medicine provides a philosophical foundation for supporting recent changes in doctor-patient communication. In particular, interpretive models are at the foundation of new approaches such as narrative medicine, that emphasize listening to patient stories, rather than merely collecting information.

Conclusion

Ultimately, debates regarding the role of language which have largely resided in non-medical literatures, have important implications for describing communication in medicine. In particular, interpretive models of language use provide an important rationale for facilitating a more robust dialogue between doctors and patients.

     

Speaking two languages with different number naming systems: What implications for magnitude judgments in bilinguals at different stages of language acquisition?

Differences between languages in terms of number naming systems may lead to performance differences in number processing. The current study focused on differences concerning the order of decades and units in two-digit number words (i.e., unit-decade order in German but decade-unit order in French) and how they affect number magnitude judgments. Participants performed basic numerical tasks, namely two-digit number magnitude judgments, and we used the compatibility effect (Nuerk et al. in Cognition 82(1):B25–B33, 2001) as a hallmark of language influence on numbers. In the first part we aimed to understand the influence of language on compatibility effects in adults coming from German or French monolingual and German–French bilingual groups (Experiment 1). The second part examined how this language influence develops at different stages of language acquisition in individuals with increasing bilingual proficiency (Experiment 2). Language systematically influenced magnitude judgments such that: (a) The spoken language(s) modulated magnitude judgments presented as Arabic digits, and (b) bilinguals’ progressive language mastery impacted magnitude judgments presented as number words. Taken together, the current results suggest that the order of decades and units in verbal numbers may qualitatively influence magnitude judgments in bilinguals and monolinguals, providing new insights into how number processing can be influenced by language(s).     

The Effect of Method Characteristics on Retest Score Gains and Criterion-Related Validity

Purpose

We sought to empirically assess the effect of predictor method characteristics (test form, item-type, and test-type) on retest score change associated with an invariant construct—general mental ability (GMA)—and to evaluate the effect of retesting on the criterion-related validity of assessments that vary in their susceptibility to retest effects.

Design

Three hundred seven individuals completed a battery of GMA assessments. After a 6-week interval, participants returned to the testing site to retest using both alternate and identical forms of the initial assessments.

Findings

Greater score gains were observed on assessments comprising heterogeneous item-types than homogeneous item-types, and on performance-based assessments than self-report assessments. However, despite variations in score gains, the relationships between the initial test scores and criterion scores were no different than the relationships between retest scores and criterion scores for all assessments.

Implications

Tests and procedures that reduce reliance on test- or item-specific knowledge and skill may help minimize score changes due to retesting across multiple administrations. Moreover, under the boundary conditions present in this study, the criterion-related validity of ability assessments may not be affected by increases in test-specific knowledge and skills.

Originality/Value

Despite the prevalence and industry support of retesting, a comprehensive understanding of retest score change still eludes researchers and practitioners. This ambiguity may be due in part to neglecting the method-construct distinctions in the retest literature. This is the first report to explicitly utilize the method-construct distinction in an effort to examine the causes and consequences of retest effects.

     

The bilingual brain: bilingual aphasia.

Since most people in the world know more than one language, bilingual aphasia is an important line of research in clinical and theoretical neurolinguistics. From a clinical and ethical viewpoint, it is no longer acceptable that bilingual aphasics be assessed in only one of the languages they know. Bilingual aphasic patients should receive comparable language tests in all their languages. In the present work, language recovery of 20 bilingual Friulian-Italian aphasics was investigated. Thirteen patients (65%) showed a similar impairment in both languages (parallel recovery), four patients (20%) showed a greater impairment of L2, while three patients (15%) showed a greater impairment of L1. Despite the many hypotheses advanced to account for nonparallel recovery, none of them seems to provide satisfactory explanations. The study of bilingual aphasics with parallel impairment of both languages allows us to verify the hypothesis whereby grammatical disorders in aphasia depend on the specific structure of each language. As far as rehabilitation programs for multilingual aphasics are concerned, several questions have been raised, many of which still need a satisfactory answer.     

Internetbasierte Vorbereitung auf eine station?re psychosomatisch-psychotherapeutische Behandlung

Background

Encouraged by promising results of online aftercare programs, this study adapted the concept of internet-based minimal interventions in order to use the time between referral and actual admission to inpatient treatment. The online intervention includes information about the hospital and the treatment and sections which aim to enhance motivation, provide support and allow contact.

Methods

A comprehensive cohort study was conducted with 379 participants in the randomized subcohort. Primary endpoint was the speed of change of the physical, mental and social impairment and of the psychological well-being in the first 2 weeks of inpatient treatment as well as the rates of reliable change 2 weeks after admission.

Results

Both the control and intervention group of the randomized subcohort showed statistically significant improvements in health status. No significant difference in the rate of change was found. The degree of achieved improvement in the physical impairment was equal to the expected intervention effect. A difference in the rates of change was found for the psychological well-being: the intervention group showed 19% more reliable improvements.

Conclusions

The study design and the contents of the intervention were accepted by the patients. The internet-based intervention can help to prepare for treatment and to shorten the settling-in period.     

Specificity of the 21-Item Test in two elderly samples

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to measure the specificity of the 21-Item Test for detecting malingering in an elderly sample. The 21-Item Test was administered to 20 community-dwelling elderly individuals with means for age, education, and Short Portable Mental Status Questionnaire (SPMSQ) error scores of 76.25 years (SD?=?7.19), 14.30 years (SD?=?3.89), and 0.30 (SD?=?4.70). None of these healthy elderly participants were cognitively impaired. A second group of 53 nursing home residents had means for age, education, and SPMSQ error scores of 82.79 years (SD?=?8.56), 11.14 years (SD = 2.46), and 3.17 (SD?=?2.46). Approximately 60% of the nursing home participants had cognitive impairment based on the SPMSQ. The cut offs provided by Iverson (1998 Iverson, G. L. 1998. 21 Item Test Research Manual, Vancouver, BC: Author.  [Google Scholar], 21 Item Test Research Manual) for interpretation of the forced-choice component of the 21-Item Test were insensitive to age and relatively insensitive to cognitive deficits. Specificity was 100% since no elderly participant from either group scored in the range indicative of sub-optimal effort or biased responding.     

Comparing visual search and eye movements in bilinguals and monolinguals

Recent research has suggested that bilinguals show advantages over monolinguals in visual search tasks, although these findings have been derived from global behavioral measures of accuracy and response times. In the present study we sought to explore the bilingual advantage by using more sensitive eyetracking techniques across three visual search experiments. These spatially and temporally fine-grained measures allowed us to carefully investigate any nuanced attentional differences between bilinguals and monolinguals. Bilingual and monolingual participants completed visual search tasks that varied in difficulty. The experiments required participants to make careful discriminations in order to detect target Landolt Cs among similar distractors. In Experiment 1, participants performed both feature and conjunction search. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants performed visual search while making different types of speeded discriminations, after either locating the target or mentally updating a constantly changing target. The results across all experiments revealed that bilinguals and monolinguals were equally efficient at guiding attention and generating responses. These findings suggest that the bilingual advantage does not reflect a general benefit in attentional guidance, but could reflect more efficient guidance only under specific task demands.     

The Moderating Role of Intergroup Contact in Race Composition,Perceived Similarity,and Applicant Attraction Relationships

Purpose

This study investigated the moderating effect of intergroup contact on the relationship between the race composition of organizational representatives, perceived similarity, and minority applicant attraction.

Design/Methodology/Approach

344 minority Malaysian-Chinese university students read a job advertisement that varied the racial composition of organizational representatives (100 % Malay or 50 % Malay–50 % Chinese or 100 % Chinese). Of these participants, 161 were Malaysian-Chinese in Malaysia (high intergroup contact location) and 183 were Malaysian-Chinese in Australia (low intergroup contact location). After reading the advertisement, participants responded to a series of scale items (e.g., perceived surface-level similarity, perceived deep-level similarity, and applicant attraction).

Findings

Results showed that the effect of race composition on attraction was stronger for minority participants in Australia than for minority participants in Malaysia. Perceived deep-level similarity mediated this moderated relationship.

Implications

The study findings suggest that organizations should include minority representatives in their recruitment advertising to attract minority applicants, particularly to attract minorities in locations with few opportunities for intergroup contact.

Originality/Value

By testing the mediating effects of perceived surface-level and deep-level similarity, this study contributes to our understanding of the mechanism linking the interaction between race composition and location with applicant attraction.

     

Alzheimer’s disease and impairment of the Self

Impairment of the Self has been described in frontal–temporal dementia but little research has been carried out in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Objective

The aim of this study was to explore changes in the self in patients with AD.

Method

Forty-seven patients with mild to moderate AD were examined using a semi-structured scale designed to assess the self-concept along three dimensions, namely, the Material Self, the Social Self and the Spiritual Self.

Results

The majority of patients (43 out of 47) presented impairment of at least one dimension of the Self. When only one dimension was affected, it was always the Social Self. The severity of impairment of the Self was correlated to the impairment of the semantic autobiographical memory and apathy.

Conclusion

The Self is impaired in AD and the Social Self dimension appears to be more vulnerable in AD than other dimensions.     

The Effects of Age on Second Language Grammar and Speech Production

The current study examined the age of learning effect on second language (L2) acquisition. The research goals of the study were twofold: to test whether there is an independent age effect controlling for other potentially confounding variables, and to clarify the age effect across L2 grammar and speech production domains. The study included 118 Mandarin-speaking immigrants and 24 native English speakers. Grammar knowledge was assessed by a grammaticality judgment task, and speech production was measured by native English speaking raters’ ratings of participants’ foreign accents. Results from the study revealed that the age of learning effect was robust for both L2 domains even after controlling for the influences of other variables, such as length of residence and years of education in the United States. However, the age of learning variable had a stronger impact on speech production than on grammar. The current results support the framework of multiple critical/sensitive periods (Long in Int Rev Appl Linguist 43(4):287–317, 2005; Newport et al. in Language, brain and cognitive development: Essays in honor of Jacques Mehler. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001; Werker and Tees in Dev Psychobiol 46(3):233–251, 2005).     

Maternal participant experience in a South African birth cohort study enrolling healthy pregnant women and their infants

Background

Critical to conducting high quality research is the ability to attract and retain participants, especially for longitudinal studies. Understanding participant experiences and motivators or barriers to participating in clinical research is crucial. There are limited data on healthy participant experiences in longitudinal research, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This study aims to investigate quantitatively participant experiences in a South African birth cohort study.

Methods

Maternal participant experience was evaluated by a self-administered survey in the Drakenstein Child Health Study, a longitudinal birth cohort study investigating the early life determinants of child health. Pregnant mothers, enrolled during the second trimester, were followed through childbirth and the early childhood years. Satisfaction scores were derived from the participant experience survey and quantitatively analyzed; associations between satisfaction scores and sociodemographic variables were then investigated using a linear regression model.

Results

Data were included from 585 pregnant mothers (median age 26.6 years), who had participated in the study for a median time of 16 months. Overall participant satisfaction was high (median score 51/60) and associated with increased attendance of study visits. Reasons for participating were a belief that involvement would improve their health, their child’s health or the health of family and friends. Potential reasons for leaving the study were inconvenience, not receiving clinical or study results, and unexpected changes in study visits or procedures. Variables associated with higher overall satisfaction scores were no prior participation in research, higher socioeconomic status, less intensive follow-up schedules and having experienced stressful life events in the past year.

Conclusions

Satisfaction scores were high and associated with increased visit attendance. Participants’ perceived benefits of study participation, most notably the potential for an improvement in the health of their child, were a significant motivator to enroll and remain in the study. The consistent theme of perceived health benefits as a motivator to join and remain in the study raises the question of whether participation in research results in actual improvements in health.

     

Word Order Processing in a Second Language: From VO to OV

Event-related potential studies on second language processing reveal that L1/L2 differences are due either to proficiency, age of acquisition or grammatical differences between L1 and L2 (Kotz in Brain Lang 109(2–3):68–74, 2009). However, the relative impact of these and other factors in second language processing is still not well understood. Here we present evidence from behavioral and ERP experiments on Basque sentence word order processing by L1Spanish–L2Basque early bilinguals (Age of Aquisition  \(=\)  3 years) with very high proficiency in their L2. Results reveal that these L2 speakers have a preference towards canonical Subject–Object–Verb word order, which they processed faster and with greater ease than non-canonical Object–Subject–Verb. This result converges with the processing preferences shown by natives and reported in Erdocia et al. (Brain Lang 109(1):1–17, 2009). However, electrophysiological measures associated to canonical (SOV) and non-canonical (OSV) sentences revealed a different pattern in the non-natives, as compared to that reported previously for natives. The non-native group elicited a P600 component that native group did not show when comparing S and O at sentence’s second position. This pattern of results suggests that, despite high proficiency, non-native language processing recruits neural resources that are different from those employed in native languages.     

Competition between rhythmic and linguistic organization in a sentence-rhythm Stroop task

We provide a test of Patel's [(2003 Patel, A. D. (2003). Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 674–681. doi: 10.1038/nn1082[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Language, music, syntax and the brain. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 674–681] shared syntactic integration resources hypothesis by investigating the competition between determinants of rhythmic parsing and linguistic parsing using a sentence-rhythm Stroop task. We played five-note rhythm patterns in which each note is replaced with a spoken word of a five-word sentence and asked participants to indicate the starting point of the rhythm while they disregarded which word would normally be heard as the first word of the sentence. In Study 1, listeners completed the task in their native language. In Study 2, we investigated whether this competition is weakened if the sentences were in a listener's non-native language. In Study 3, we investigated how much language mastery is necessary to obtain the effects seen in Studies 1 and 2. We demonstrate that processing resources for rhythmic parsing and linguistic parsing overlap with one another, particularly when the task is demanding. We also show that the tendency for language to bias processing does not require deep knowledge of the language.