Visual word recognition in bilinguals

1
(No Transcript)
2
On being bilingual

• Marc Brysbaert
• Ghent University

3
Bilingualism is everywhere

• There are at least 3000 languages for 195
  independent countries.
• Bilingualism is especially common among
  economically non-dominant groups.
• The world language usually follows economic
  dominance, because these people cannot be
  motivated to learn another language.

4
So, what do we know about bilingualism?

• Ill start with a model summarising our knowledge
  some 15 years ago.
• Then Ill show that much of what we thought to be
  true turns out to be wrong ...
• ... at least to me

5
Kroll Stewarts (1994) revised hierarchical
model
Mental lexicon L1
Mental lexion L2
Concepts
6
Kroll Stewarts (1994) revised hierarchical
model

• Four ideas
• Distinction between the L1 lexicon and the L2
  lexicon.
• We have a mechanism of language control
  (selective access).
• Asymmetries in the connections (in particular the
  idea of direct connections between L2 words and
  their L1 translations).
• Conceptual knowledge is language-independent.

7
Spivey Marian (Psychological Science, 1999)

• Started from the finding that when people hear a
  word, initially all words with the same sounds
  become activated (e.g., when people hear
  beaker, initially the word beetle is
  acitvated as well).
• Shown with the visual world paradigm (e.g.,
  Allopenna et al., 1998)

8
speaker
beaker
beetle
carriage
Eye movements are monitored to know what the
participant is looking at.
9
First, look at the centre of the screen. Now,
pick up the beaker ... ... And put it above the
circle.
Participants more often look at the beetle upon
hearing beaker than at the other two objects
(Allopenna et al., 1998).
10
Spivey Marian (Psychological Science, 1999)
12 late Russian-English fluent bilinguals
speech processing
Poloji marku. Pick up the stamp.
marker
marku
11
(No Transcript)
12
Dijkstra, Timmermans, Schriefers (JML, 2000)
- Dutch-English bilinguals (unbalanced) - 3 types
of homographs list (HF English LF
Dutch trick) brand (LF English HF Dutch
fire) hark (LF English LF Dutch
rake) - Dutch go/no-go task
13
homographs Dutch control words HFE-LFD RT
868 630 (list) no-go 26
4
LFE-HFD RT 589 558 (brand) no-go
0 0 LFE-LFD RT 763 706
(hark) no-go 22 6
On being blinded by your other language
14
Van Hell Dijkstra (2002)

• Cognates Words in two languages with the same
  meaning and a similar form
• E.g. tomaat tomate tomato
• Lexical decision in Dutch
• Cognates vs. control words
• Dutch English cognates (appel apple)
• Dutch French cognates (citroen citron)

15
Ghent Lexicon
Van Hell Dijkstra
Psychology students 499 519 529 30 10
Students French 489 520 541 52 21
Psychology students 559 585 595 36 10
Dutch-English cognate Dutch-French
cognate Control word English cognate
effect French cognate effect
16
Van Assche et al. (2009)

• Can the cognate effect also be found in sentence
  reading?
• Sentences
• Zijn jongste zoontje wou zich als een piloot
  verkleden voor carnaval.
• His youngest son wanted to dress up as a pilote
  for the carnaval party.
• Zijn jongste zoontje wou zich als een konijn
  verkleden voor carnaval.
• His youngest son wanted to dress up as a rabbit
  for the carnaval party.

17
(No Transcript)
18
Why are we not able to control the languages that
are activated?

• A lot of information becomes activated
  automatically (balistically) as soon as we see a
  word.
• For instance, in addition to orthographic
  information, phonological information is
  activated as well.

19
Phonology in silent reading

• Silent reading without moving the lips is a very
  recent skill (early 20th century?)
• In 383 Aurelius Augustine expressed his surprise
  when he met the bishop of Milan and saw that he
  could read silently. When he read, said
  Augustine, his eyes scanned the page and his
  heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was
  silent and his tongue was still. (as cited in
  Manguel, 1996, p. 42).
• Saenger (1997) Silent reading became possible
  only after spaces were inserted between the words
  (started from the 8th century before, there was
  scriptio continua)

20
Phonology in silent reading

• Beginning readers need to sound out the words
  speed of reading acquisition depends on the
  transparency of the letter-sound correspondences.
• Sound still plays a major role in current-day
  expert silent reading
• Inner voice (difficult texts)
• Tongue twister effect (the purpose of the play
  was to please the brave prince)
• TTE exists in all languages (also with
  logographic writings)

21
Phonology in silent reading

• Long time discussion whether phonological coding
  occurred after the word recognition (addressed
  phonology) or as part of the recognition process
  itself (assembled phonology).
• Now quite good evidence that phonology is
  assembled prelexically and together with the
  orthographic code activates lexical
  representations (i.e., weak phonological model
  Ferrand, 1995 Grainger, Kiyonaga, Holcomb,
  2006 Perea Carreiras, 2008 Rastle
  Brysbaert, 2006)

22
Phonology in silent readingMasked priming

• Strongest evidence for the contribution of
  assembled phonology comes from masked priming
  with pseudohomophones
• E.g., Rastle Brysbaert (2006)
• Target USE
• Primes yuice vs. durke (SOA 58 ms)
• Task Lexical decision

23

USE
yuice
Faster lexical decision time to the target USE
after the prime yuice than after the prime
durke. Because the primes are nonwords, recoding
must be prelexical.
24
Phonology in silent readingMasked priming

• Evidence that phonological priming is automatic
  (Brysbaert, 2001 Drieghe Brysbaert, 2002 Xu
  Perfetti, 1999).
• If so, you ought to find evidence for
  cross-language priming.

25
Brysbaert et al. (JEPHPP, 1999, 2002)

• French target words preceded by Dutch primes
• 2 types of primes
• pseudohom soer - SOURD
• graph. contr. siard - SOURD
• Perceptual identification task

26

• Task as seen by the participants
• On each trial a French word in capitals is
  flashed in the middle of the screen between a
  forward and a backward mask consisting of
  . Your task is to guess the word.

brane
BRAIN

Nothing was said about the primes (they were not
noticed). Participants were not informed about
the fact that some primes were homophonic if they
were read aloud according to the Dutch
spelling-sound correspondences.
27
Dutch-French stimuli
French- Dutch
French mono
Dutch- French
30 23 7
homophonic (soer-SOURD) graphemic (siard-SOURD)
phon. priming effect
24 33 -9
41 34 7
28
Summary selective accessand separated lexicons

• Strong evidence against selective access (also in
  speech production).
• Also increasing evidence against separate
  lexicons.

29
Semantic access from L2

• Is it really the case that we have to understand
  the meaning of L2 words via L1 translation?
• How long is this the case? (developmental aspect)
• Duyck Brysbaert (2004) what about the
  translation of number names?

30
Why numbers?

• There is a very straightforward prediction you
  can make Whenever numbers activate their
  meaning you find a number magnitude effect
• No magnitude effect in simple number naming
• Magnitude effects in number memory and number
  comparison

31
(No Transcript)
32
Brysbaert (1995)
33
Semantic medition in number translation

• Duyck Brysbaert (2004, experiment 1)
• Dutch-French bilinguals who
• Name L1 number words in L1
• Name Arabic numbers in L1
• Translate L2 number words in L1 (backward)

34
Digits
Words
35
(No Transcript)
36
The bilinguals were too proficient

• Duyck Brysbaert (2004, experiment 3)
• Participants learned new, artificial (Estonian)
  number words
• Name L1 number words in L1
• Name Arabic numbers in L1
• Translate L2 number words in L1 (backward)

37
(No Transcript)
38
Summary semantic activationfrom L2 words

• Connections between L2 words and meaning are
  established very rapidly when there is a clear
  mapping from the words to the concepts.
• Now also being shown for other types of stimuli.
• Also growing evidence that the type of teaching
  plays a role (word-list focused vs. meaning
  focused).

39
Are concepts language independent?

• We know that language independence is not true
  for episodic memory.
• We know that language independence is not true
  for short term retention (Sahlin et al., 2005)
• 120 prolific English-Spanish bilinguals
• List of 120 words heard at a speed of 1 w per 3
  s half English, half Spanish
• Recognition test old vs. new
• 85 in English-English, 88 in Spanish-Spanish
• 13 in Spanish-English, and 17 in English-Spanish

40
Are concepts language independent?

• But could language independence be true for
  semantic knowledge
• Conceptmaison concepthouse concepthuis
• We dont know yet, but there are indications that
  semantic memory may be much more language
  dependent that we currently assume
• E.g., translation subtleties a large book ltgt a
  large sister

41
Are concepts language independent?

• Blot et al. (2003) Brain storming in L1 and L2
• What uses could people make of an extra thumb
  (next to the little finger)?
• English-Spanish and Spanish-English bilinguals
• Ideas generated in L1 25
• Ideas generated in L2 20
• After the session, change of language
• Extra ideas in L1, but not in L2

42
Conclusion

• Go and read
• Brysbaert, M., Duyck, W. (in press). Is it time
  to leave behind the revised hierarchical model of
  bilingual language processing after 15 years of
  service? Bilingualism Language and Cognition.
• Available at biblio.ugent.be
• Not all doom and gloom
• Bilingualism increases your ability to switch
  tasks.
• Bilingualism may postpone Alzheimer by 5-10 yrs.