Cross-language and cross-modal activation in hearing bimodal bilinguals

Abstract

HighlightsActivation of sign language while bimodal bilinguals heard spoken words.Non-selective cross modality language activation in native and late signers.Parallel activation of the non-dominant language while using the dominant language. AbstractThis study investigates cross-language and cross-modal activation in bimodal bilinguals. Two groups of hearing bimodal bilinguals, natives (Experiment 1) and late learners (Experiment 2), for whom spoken Spanish is their dominant language and Spanish Sign Language (LSE) their non-dominant language, performed a monolingual semantic decision task with word pairs heard in Spanish. Half of the word pairs had phonologically related signed translations in LSE. The results showed that bimodal bilinguals were faster at judging semantically related words when the equivalent signed translations were phonologically related while they were slower judging semantically unrelated word pairs when the LSE translations were phonologically related. In contrast, monolingual controls with no knowledge of LSE did not show any of these effects. The results indicate cross-language and cross-modal activation of the non-dominant language in hearing bimodal bilinguals, irrespective of the age of acquisition of the signed language.

Implicit co-activation of American Sign Language in deaf readers: An ERP study

“…Pairs with mean semantic ratings of ≤ 2.5 were included in the semantically unrelated condition (mean 1.36, SD .34) and those with mean semantic ratings of ≥ 5.4 were included in the semantically rated condition (mean 6.20, SD .34). These cut-offs are similar to, or more restrictive than, previous behavioral studies with bimodal bilinguals (Kubus et al, 2015; Morford et al, 2014; Morford et al, 2011; Villameriel et al, 2016). There was a significant difference between the ratings of semantically related and unrelated trials, t (198) = 100.43, p < .001.…”

“…This pattern of behavioral results is commonly interpreted as support for implicit co-activation of translation equivalents via lexicosemantic spreading of activation in bimodal bilinguals (e.g., Kubus et al, 2015; Morford et al, 2014; Morford et al, 2011; Villameriel et al, 2016), just as in unimodal bilinguals. Curiously, however, the mere presence of behavioral effects in these bimodal bilinguals conflicts with the line of reasoning introduced by Thierry and Wu (2007; Wu & Thierry, 2010), in which behavioral effects in the implicit priming paradigm arise exclusively from overt phonological processing of the non-target language.…”

“…Considerably less is known about analogous processes in “bimodal” bilinguals, who know both a spoken and a signed language. There is some evidence from event-related potentials (ERPs) suggesting that spoken language translation equivalents are activated during sign processing (Hosemann, 2015), and recent behavioral evidence suggests that sign translation equivalents may also be activated during visual or auditory word recognition, with activation propagating directly through lexical links or indirectly via shared semantic representations (e.g., Giezen, Blumenfeld, Shook, Marian, & Emmorey, 2015; Kubus, Villwock, Morford, & Rathman, 2015; Morford, Kroll, Piñar, & Wilkinson, 2014; Morford, Wilkinson, Villwock, Piñar, & Kroll, 2011; Shook & Marian, 2012; Villameriel, Dias, Costello, & Carreiras, 2016). However, these behavioral studies only index the endpoint of a number of processes, making it difficult to determine whether the effects result from lexicosemantic interactivity or from later, more explicit translation processes.…”

“…Several recent studies using behavioral methods have extended the unimodal literature to provide preliminary evidence of cross-modal language co-activation in both hearing and deaf bimodal bilinguals (see Emmorey, Giezen, & Gollan, 2016; Ormel & Giezen, 2014, for reviews), and many of these studies employed the implicit phonological priming paradigm (e.g., Kubus et al, 2015; Morford et al, 2014; Morford et al, 2011; Villameriel et al, 2016). For example, Morford and colleagues (2011) compared processing of English word pairs with ASL translations that shared two out of three phonological parameters (handshape, location, movement) to word pairs with ASL translations that did not overlap phonologically.…”

“…A number of studies have suggested that sign language translations influence processing of print and spoken word recognition in bimodal bilinguals (e.g., Giezen et al, 2015; Kubus et al, 2015; Morford et al, 2014; Morford et al, 2011; Villameriel et al, 2016). However, the limited scope of these behavioral studies complicates their interpretation.…”