Investigating linguistic relativity through bilingualism: the case of grammatical gender

The authors investigated linguistic relativity effects by examining the semantic effects of grammatical gender (present in Italian but absent in English) in fluent bilingual speakers as compared with monolingual speakers. In an error-induction experiment, they used responses by monolingual speakers to establish a baseline for bilingual speakers and show that gender affects the semantic substitution errors made by monolingual Italian speakers compared with monolingual English speakers. They then showed that Italian-English bilingual speakers behave like monolingual English speakers when the task is in English and like monolingual Italian speakers when the task is in Italian, hence exhibiting appropriate semantic representations for each language. These results show that for bilingual speakers there is intraspeaker relativity in semantic representations and, therefore, that gender does not have a conceptual, nonlinguistic effect. The results also have implications for models of bilingual semantic memory and processing.     

Gender Bender: Gender Errors in L2 Pronoun Production

To address questions about information processing at the message level, pronoun errors of second language (L2) speakers of English were studied. Some L2 pronoun errors—he/she confusions by Spanish speakers of L2 English—could be due to differences in the informational requirements of the speakers’ two languages, providing a window into the composition of the preverbal message that guides grammatical encoding during language production. To study this, Spanish and French speakers of L2 English were made to answer questions designed to elicit pronouns. Spanish speakers produced significantly more gender errors than any other type of pronoun error, and significantly more gender errors than French speakers. The results are as expected given that Spanish is a pro-drop language where many sentences would not have required gender to be encoded had they been uttered in the L1 instead of the L2. The implications for theories about the preverbal message are discussed.     

Reading strategies in English by adults whose first language is Spanish

The performance of nine Spanish speakers on tests of single-word reading and phonological awareness in English was examined and compared to that of monolingual adults and to that of monolingual children of similar reading ability. Even though the Spanish participants had several years experience of reading and writing in English and performed well at reading nonwords, they showed little evidence of phonological processing strategies when reading familiar words. For example, they performed relatively poorly at written rhyme judgements despite good performance on tests of phonological awareness. When compared to monolingual English children, the Spanish speakers made fewer phonological errors on tests of visual lexical decision and written homophone definition. Unlike the children, they showed no evidence of a regularity effect in reading. Only on unfamiliar words did they show evidence of phonological processing in reading. Possible explanations of this pattern of performance are discussed.     

Strength of German accent under altered auditory feedback.

Borden's (1979, 1980) hypothesis that speakers with vulnerable speech systems rely more heavily on feedback monitoring than do speakers with less vulnerable systems was investigated. The second language (L2) of a speaker is vulnerable, in comparison with the native language, so alteration to feedback should have a detrimental effect on it, according to this hypothesis. Here, we specifically examined whether altered auditory feedback has an effect on accent strength when speakers speak L2. There were three stages in the experiment. First, 6 German speakers who were fluent in English (their L2) were recorded under six conditions--normal listening, amplified voice level, voice shifted in frequency, delayed auditory feedback, and slowed and accelerated speech rate conditions. Second, judges were trained to rate accent strength. Training was assessed by whether it was successful in separating German speakers speaking English from native English speakers, also speaking English. In the final stage, the judges ranked recordings of each speaker from the first stage as to increasing strength of German accent. The results show that accents were more pronounced under frequency-shifted and delayed auditory feedback conditions than under normal or amplified feedback conditions. Control tests were done to ensure that listeners were judging accent, rather than fluency changes caused by altered auditory feedback. The findings are discussed in terms of Borden's hypothesis and other accounts about why altered auditory feedback disrupts speech control.     

Strength of German accent under altered auditory feedback

Borden’s (1979, 1980) hypothesis that speakers with vulnerable speech systems rely more heavily on feedback monitoring than do speakers with less vulnerable systems was investigated. The second language (L2) of a speaker is vulnerable, in comparison with the native language, so alteration to feedback should have a detrimental effect on it, according to this hypothesis. Here, we specifically examined whether altered auditory feedback has an effect on accent strength when speakers speak L2. There were three stages in the experiment. First, 6 German speakers who were fluent in English (their L2) were recorded under six conditions—normal listening, amplified voice level, voice shifted in frequency, delayed auditory feedback, and slowed and accelerated speech rate conditions. Second, judges were trained to rate accent strength. Training was assessed by whether it was successful in separating German speakers speaking English from native English speakers, also speaking English. In the final stage, the judges ranked recordings of each speaker from the first stage as to increasing strength of German accent. The results show that accents were more pronounced under frequency-shifted and delayed auditory feedback conditions than under normal or amplified feedback conditions. Control tests were done to ensure that listeners were judging accent, rather than fluency changes caused by altered auditory feedback. The findings are discussed in terms of Borden’s hypothesis and other accounts about why altered auditory feedback disrupts speech control.     

Translation and validation of the Spanish version of the RELATE questionnaire using a modified serial approach for cross-cultural translation.

This article describes the initial translation and validation of the Spanish version of the RELATionshhip Evaluation (RELATE) questionnaire with a sample of monolingual English speakers (n = 78), a sample of monolingual Spanish speakers (n = 18), and two samples of Spanish/English Bilinguals (n = 27 and n = 34). Cross-cultural and cross-language equivalence of the Spanish version of RELATE to the original English version were assessed using a Modified Serial Approach (MSA) for instrument translation. Face and content validity of the Spanish RELATE were established. Test-retest reliability indices obtained with the translated version among the monolingual and bilingual Spanish speaking groups were consistently equivalent to, and in some cases higher than, the baseline reliability obtained with the monolingual English speaking group. Applications of the Spanish version of RELATE and use of the MSA for researchers and practitioners are presented.     

Convergent cortical representation of semantic processing in bilinguals

This study examined whether semantic processes in two languages (English and Spanish) are mediated by a common neural system in fluent bilinguals who acquired their second language years after acquiring their first language. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed while bilingual participants made semantic and nonsemantic decisions about words in Spanish and English. There was greater activation for semantic relative to nonsemantic decisions in left and right frontal regions, with greater left frontal activation. The locations of activations were similar for both languages, and no differences were found when semantic decisions for English and Spanish words were compared directly. These results demonstrate a shared frontal lobe system for semantic analysis of the languages and are consistent with cognitive research on bilingualism indicating that the two languages of a bilingual person access a common semantic system.     

Parent involvement in school: English speaking versus Spanish speaking families

The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships between three predictor variables (attitude toward school, parent-child communication, and school commitment action) and the criterion variable (parent involvement) in a representative sample and to examine if these relationships were consistent across three groups (English speaking Caucasian family, English speaking Latino family, and Spanish speaking Latino families). Using a national database (N = 9.841), multi-group SEM analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between three predictor variables and the criterion variable in three family groups. While all three predictor variables significantly predicted parent involvement in English speaking Caucasian and Latino families, only two variables (parent-child communication and school commitment actions), significantly predicted parent involvement in Spanish speaking Latino families. The results of this study suggest that when administrators, teachers and counselors in school strive to share specific school-related information with Latino families, Spanish speaking families are more likely to become involved with schools.     

Blind Speakers Show Language‐Specific Patterns in Co‐Speech Gesture but Not Silent Gesture

Sighted speakers of different languages vary systematically in how they package and order components of a motion event in speech. These differences influence how semantic elements are organized in gesture, but only when those gestures are produced with speech (co‐speech gesture), not without speech (silent gesture). We ask whether the cross‐linguistic similarity in silent gesture is driven by the visuospatial structure of the event. We compared 40 congenitally blind adult native speakers of English or Turkish (20/language) to 80 sighted adult speakers (40/language; half with, half without blindfolds) as they described three‐dimensional motion scenes. We found an effect of language on co‐speech gesture, not on silent gesture—blind speakers of both languages organized their silent gestures as sighted speakers do. Humans may have a natural semantic organization that they impose on events when conveying them in gesture without language—an organization that relies on neither visuospatial cues nor language structure.     

Cross-language influences: translation status affects intraword sense relatedness

Many words have more than one meaning, and these meanings vary in their degree of relatedness. In the present experiment, we examined whether this degree of relatedness is influenced by whether or not the two meanings share a translation in a bilingual’s other language. Native English speakers with Spanish as a second language (i.e., English-Spanish bilinguals) and native Spanish speakers with English as a second language (i.e., Spanish-English bilinguals) were presented with pairs of phrases instantiating different senses of ambiguous English words (e.g., dinner date–expiration date) and were asked to decide whether the two senses were related in meaning. Critically, for some pairs of phrases, a single Spanish translation encompassed both meanings of the ambiguous word (joint-translation condition; e.g., mercado in Spanish refers to both a flea market and the housing market), but for others, each sense corresponded to a different Spanish translation (split-translation condition; e.g., cita in Spanish refers to a dinner date, but fecha refers to an expiration date). The proportions of “yes” (related) responses revealed that, relative to monolingual English speakers, Spanish–English bilinguals consider joint-translation senses to be less related than split-translation senses. These findings exemplify semantic cross-language influences from a first to a second language and reveal the semantic structure of the bilingual lexicon.     

Attentional control in early and later bilingual children

We examined differences in attentional control among school-age children who were monolingual English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals (who began speaking both languages by age 3), and later Spanish-English bilingual children (who began speaking English after age 3). Children's attentional control was tested using the Attention Network Test (ANT). All language groups performed equally on ANT networks; however, when controlling for age and verbal ability, groups differed significantly on reaction time. Early bilingual children responded faster on the ANT compared to both monolingual and later bilingual children, suggesting an attentional monitoring advantage for early bilinguals. These results add to evidence of advantaged cognitive functioning among bilinguals and are consistent with the possibility that children who begin speaking a second language earlier in childhood have greater advantages, due either to effects of acquiring a second language earlier or to longer duration of bilingual experience.     

Effects of the lexical-semantic variables in visual word recognition

In languages with a deep orthography such as English, a number of studies have shown the effects of lexical and semantic variables on word recognition. In languages with a shallow orthography such as Spanish the regularity of the grapheme - phoneme correspondences may mean that lexical and semantic variables could have less relevant roles. In this study, three variables were tested: frequency, age of acquisition and imageability. These three variables were factorially manipulated in three lexical decision task and three word naming tasks. The results show that in lexical decision both frequency and age of acquisition influence reaction times but imageability was not significant. In the word reading task, only the age of acquisition had a significant effect. The implications of these results for models of reading in Spanish are discussed.     

英汉双语者二语口语产生中音韵编码过程的同化机制

本研究运用事件相关电位技术, 结合时空微态分割分析法, 考察英汉双语者二语口语产生过程中音韵编码过程的同化与顺应机制。研究中采用图词干扰即时命名任务, 比较英汉双语者的汉语产生过程中音韵编码的加工单元与汉语母语者的汉语产生过程还是与英语母语者的英语产生过程的特点类似。反应时结果发现汉汉组、英汉组与英英组都出现显著的音节效应。事件相关电位的结果发现英汉双语者的汉语产生过程中出现了音素效应, 与其英语产生过程的特点类似, 音素效应在英语和汉语的产生过程中都出现在图画呈现后的200~250 ms之间, 而汉语母语者的汉语产生过程中仅发现了音节效应, 出现在250~300 ms之间。时空微态分割分析发现英汉双语者在汉语产生的音韵编码过程与英语母语者在英语产生过程所对应的脑电微态成分相同, 仅在持续时间上存在显著差异; 其微态成分不同于汉语母语者的汉语产生过程。上述结果表明英汉双语者汉语产生的音韵编码过程与英语作为母语时的产生过程相似, 而与汉语作为母语时的产生过程不同。英汉双语者的汉语产生过程采用了母语同化机制。     

Action Attenuates the Effect of Visibility on Gesture Rates

Much evidence suggests that semantic characteristics of a message (e.g., the extent to which the message evokes thoughts of spatial or motor properties) and social characteristics of a speaking situation (e.g., whether there is a listener who can see the speaker) both influence how much speakers gesture. However, the Gesture as Simulated Action (GSA) framework (Hostetter & Alibali, 2008 ) predicts that these effects should not be independent but should interact such that the effect of visibility is lessened when a message evokes strong thoughts of action. This study tested this claim by comparing the gesture rates produced by speakers as they described 24 nouns that vary in how strongly they evoke thoughts of action. Further, half of the words were described with visibility between speaker and listener blocked. The results demonstrated a significant interaction as predicted by the GSA framework.     

Broken agreement

The subjects and verbs of English sentences agree in number. This superficially simple syntactic operation is regularly implemented by speakers, but occasionally derails in sentences such as The cost of the improvements have not yet been estimated. We examined whether the incidence of such errors was related to the presence of subject-like semantic features in the immediate preverbal nouns, in light of current questions about the semantic versus syntactic nature of sentence subjects and the interactivity of language processing. In three experiments, speakers completed sentence fragments designed to elicit erroneous agreement. We varied the number and animacy of the head noun and the immediate preverbal (local) noun, as well as the amount of material separating the head noun from the verb. The plurality of the local noun phrase had a large and reliable effect on the incidence of agreement errors, but neither its animacy nor its length affected their occurrence. The latter findings suggest, respectively, that the semantic features of sentence subjects are of minimal relevance to the syntactic and morphological processes that implement agreement, and that agreement features are specified at a point in processing where the eventual length of sentential constituents has little effect on syntactic planning. Both results follow naturally from explanations of language production that emphasize the segregation of sentence formulation processes into relatively autonomous components.     

Accessing word meaning in two languages: an event-related brain potential study of beginning bilinguals

Twenty-eight native-English speakers enrolled in beginning and intermediate university Spanish courses participated in a mixed language semantic categorization task in which critical words were presented in English (L1) and Spanish (L2) and repetitions of these words (within- and between-languages) were presented on subsequent trials (i.e., immediate repetition). Event-related potentials were recorded to all items allowing for comparisons of the N400 component to repetitions within- and between-languages as well as to words presented for the first time. Three important findings were observed in this sample of participants during relatively early stages of acquiring a second language. First, in the typical N400 window (300-500ms), between-language repetition (translation) produced a smaller reduction in N400 amplitude than did within-language repetition. Second, the time-course of between-language repetition effects tended to be more extended in time and differed as a function of language with L2-L1 repetitions producing larger priming effects early (during the typical N400 window) and L1-L2 repetitions producing larger priming effects later (during windows after the typical N400). Third, a greater negativity in the ERP waveforms was observed when the word on the directly preceding trial was from the other language. Within the time frame of the N400, this language switch effect arose only when the target word was Spanish and the preceding word English (i.e., L1-L2). The results are discussed within the framework of current models of bilingual lexical processing.     

Semantic Ambiguity Effects in L2 Word Recognition

The present study examined the ambiguity effects in second language (L2) word recognition. Previous studies on first language (L1) lexical processing have observed that ambiguous words are recognized faster and more accurately than unambiguous words on lexical decision tasks. In this research, L1 and L2 speakers of English were asked whether a letter string on a computer screen was an English word or not. An ambiguity advantage was found for both groups and greater ambiguity effects were found for the non-native speaker group when compared to the native speaker group. The findings imply that the larger ambiguity advantage for L2 processing is due to their slower response time in producing adequate feedback activation from the semantic level to the orthographic level.     

The incidence of false memories in native and non-native speakers

The current study consisted of four experiments that utilised a novel approach to investigating false memories. Each of the experiments in the current study investigated individuals with varying experience with different languages. Experiment 1 tested participants in both their native and secondary languages as well as monolingual English speakers, while Experiment 2 assessed native Spanish speakers using both English and Spanish associative lists. Experiment 3 examined the illusory memories in monolingual Spanish speakers in both English and Spanish, while Experiment 4 investigated false memories in monolingual English speakers in both English and Spanish. Results indicated that memory for list items and critical lures was greatest when the lists were presented in the participants' primary language. Results can be explained by either activation-based or fuzzy-trace theories.     

The incidence of false memories in native and non-native speakers

The current study consisted of four experiments that utilised a novel approach to investigating false memories. Each of the experiments in the current study investigated individuals with varying experience with different languages. Experiment 1 tested participants in both their native and secondary languages as well as monolingual English speakers, while Experiment 2 assessed native Spanish speakers using both English and Spanish associative lists. Experiment 3 examined the illusory memories in monolingual Spanish speakers in both English and Spanish, while Experiment 4 investigated false memories in monolingual English speakers in both English and Spanish. Results indicated that memory for list items and critical lures was greatest when the lists were presented in the participants' primary language. Results can be explained by either activation-based or fuzzy-trace theories.