Breaking Down the Bilingual Cost in Speech Production

Abstract

Bilinguals have been shown to perform worse than monolinguals in a variety of verbal tasks. The current study investigated this bilingual verbal cost in a large-scale picture naming study conducted in Spanish. We explored how individual characteristics of the participants and the linguistic properties of the words being spoken influence this performance cost. In particular, we focused on the contributions of lexical frequency and phonological similarity across translations. The naming performance of Spanish-Catalan bilinguals speaking in their dominant and non-dominant language was compared to that of Spanish monolinguals. Single trial naming latencies were analyzed by means of linear mixed models accounting for individual effects at the participant and item level. While decreasing lexical frequency was shown to increase naming latencies in all groups, this variable by itself did not account for the bilingual cost. In turn, our results showed that the bilingual cost disappeared when naming words with high phonological similarity across translations. In short, our results show that frequency of use can play a role in the emergence of the bilingual cost, but that phonological similarity across translations should be regarded as one of the most important variables that determine the bilingual cost in speech production. Low phonological similarity across translations yields worse performance in bilinguals and promotes the bilingual cost in naming performance. The implications of our results for the effect of phonological similarity across translations within the bilingual speech production system are discussed.

The joint effects of bilingualism, DLD and item frequency on children's lexical‐retrieval performance

“…However, preliminary analysis on the few (ten) cognate items included in the set revealed that MoDLD and BiDLD did not differ in their lexical-retrieval performance on these items. This pattern is consistent with previous literature on bilingual adults (e.g., Sadat et al 2016), showing comparable performance on cognates across groups, and with the cognate facilitation effect for bilingual children (e.g., Poarch and Van Hell 2012). Such findings may be due to the fact that the joint use of the lexical form across both languages increases the frequency of these items, or to the fact that the form overlap for cognate words leads to reduced competition across languages.…”

Traces of An Early Learned Second Language in Discontinued Bilingualism

“…When compared to monolingual performance, the absence of interlanguage form similarity will thus lead to a cost in bilingual lexical access. This may, for example, induce a higher number of unresolved tip‐of‐the‐tongue states in the case of noncognates for bilinguals compared to monolinguals, as well as a bilingual cost in naming performance in the case of noncognates (Sadat et al., ). Overall, the current results highlight that phonological similarity across languages plays an important and lasting role for bilingual lexical access, even after many years of living in another language environment.…”

“…More importantly for the present study, processing benefits for cognate retrieval have been shown in the two languages of a bilingual. Previous studies comparing bilingual to monolingual performance reported production benefits for cognates when compared to noncognates (e.g., Costa, Caramazza, & Sebastián‐Gallés, ; Costa, Santesteban, & Caño, ; Gollan & Acenas, ; Ivanova & Costa, ; for a reconsideration of benefits, see Sadat, Martin, Magnuson, Alario, & Costa, ), highlighting the special role of cognates in bilinguals. Cognate effects in word production of bilinguals suggest that the words of the two languages spread activation to their common phonological representations.…”

“…Accordingly, a bilingual cost would result from weaker links between the semantic and phonological representations, underlying poorer word retrieval abilities in bilinguals compared to monolinguals (Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, ). Finally, a more recent proposal for the worse performance of bilinguals in language production relates to processing costs at postlexical stages (Hanulová, Davidson, & Indefrey, ; Sadat, Martin, Alario, & Costa, ; Sadat et al., ). It states that processes such as phonological encoding, syllabification, and articulation may be more effortful if there are incompatibilities between the constraints of each language, which in turn leads to costs in the speech of bilinguals relative to monolinguals.…”

“…Accordingly, a bilingual cost would result from weaker links between the semantic and phonological representations, underlying poorer word retrieval abilities in bilinguals compared to monolinguals (Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008). Finally, a more recent proposal for the worse performance Friesen et al (2015) monolinguals > bilinguals Gollan et al (2002) monolinguals > bilinguals Kormi-Nouri et al (2012) monolinguals > bilinguals Portocarrero et al (2007) monolinguals > bilinguals Rosselli et al (2002) monolinguals > bilinguals Rosselli et al (2000) monolinguals > bilinguals Sandoval et al (2010) monolinguals > bilinguals Letter fluency Bialystok et al (2008b; Study 2) monolinguals < bilinguals Friesen et al (2015) monolinguals < bilinguals Kormi-Nouri et al (2003) monolinguals < bilinguals Kormi-Nouri et al (2012) monolinguals < bilinguals Luo et al (2010) monolinguals Gollan et al (2002) monolinguals > bilinguals Sandoval et al (2010) monolinguals > bilinguals Vega- Mendoza et al (2015) monolinguals > bilinguals of bilinguals in language production relates to processing costs at postlexical stages (Hanulová, Davidson, & Indefrey, 2011;Sadat, Martin, Alario, & Costa, 2012;Sadat et al, 2015). It states that processes such as phonological encoding, syllabification, and articulation may be more effortful if there are incompatibilities between the constraints of each language, which in turn leads to costs in the speech of bilinguals relative to monolinguals.…”