Intralanguage vs. interlanguage Stroop effects in two types of writing systems

Abstract

The relation between word processing strategy and the orthographic structure of a written language was explored in the present study. Three experiments were conducted using ChineseEnglish, Spanish-English, and Japanese-English bilinguals, respectively. Each subject was asked to perform a modified Stroop color-naming task in which the stimulus and the response language were either the same or different. The magnitude of the Stroop effect was greater in the intralanguage condition than in the interlanguage condition. When the magnitude of reduction of Stroop interference from the intra-to the interlanguage condition was compared across all bilingual groups, an inverse relationship was found between the magnitude of reduction and the degree of similarity between the orthographic structures of the two written languages. It is concluded that reading logographic and reading phonetic symbols entail different processing mechanisms and that controversial issues in bilingual processing cannot be resolved without taking into account the effect of orthographic variations on the information processing system. The invention of written symbols to represent spoken language is undoubtedly one of the most important achievements in the history of mankind. The written symbol has enabled us to overcome the limitations of space and time imposed by oral communication and has allowed us to extend our thoughts across centuries as well as continents.There have been many different types of writing systems invented to represent various types of spoken languages. The designing principles for writing systems can be divided into two different categories. The first type of orthography evolved from the earlier semasiography, which expresses a general idea in picture drawings rather than a sequence of words in a sentence, to logographs with each symbol expressing a single particular morpheme. The concept underlying the We thank Jessie S. H. Deou and Susan Stone for their great help in conducting the third experiment and Katherine Malley for her helpful comments on earlier drafts. The final version of this paper has also benefited from comments made by Irving Biederman and the reviewers. The present study was supported in part by an Inter-Campus Research Fund from the Academic Senate of the University of California, Riverside, to the second author, and in part by a traineeship from the National Institute of Mental Health to the third author (supervised by Robert Singer). development of this type of orthography is to map the written symbols directly onto meaning. The second type of orthography evolved from the rebus (a representation of a word or phrase by pictures that suggest how a word is pronounced in the spoken language; see Figure 1) to the syllabary and then to the alphabet. The concept behind it is sound writing. That is, the relation of sign to meaning is meant to be mediated through the sound system of the spoken language. This difference in how lexical units may be recovered from written symbols raises an important and interesting quest...

Translation Processes in Bilinguals: Role of Inter-Lingual Distance and Second Language Proficiency

“…Chen and Ho (1986) suggested that extreme differences between languages make it easier to resist competing stimuli in the second language, reducing the inter-lingual Stroop interference effect. This is in line with the findings of Fang, Tzeng, and Alva (1981) who analyzed the difference in Stroop interference in Chinese-English, Japanese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals and showed that as the similarity between the two languages decreased, the difference between within-and between-language interference increased. On the other hand, Costa, Santesteban, and Ivanova (2006) reported that language similarity did not affect the way bilinguals control their speech.…”

Cognitive integration of language and memory in bilinguals: Semantic representation.

“…In the cross-language version of the traditional color-word interference task, ink colors are to be named in a language different from the one in which the incongruent color words are printed. For bilinguals who are highly proficient in both of their languages, cross-language interference is consistently observed (relative to naming colors of neutral stimuli such as color patches or rows of Xs), though the interference is reduced relative to the degree of within-language interference (Abunuwara, 1992;Chen & Ho, 1986;Dalrymple-Alford, 1968;Dyer, 1971;Fang, Tzeng, & Alva, 1981;Kiyak, 1982;Lee, Wee, Tzeng, & Hung, 1992;Preston & Lambert, 1969;Smith & Kirsner, 1982). As can be seen from Table 10, the between-language interference effect relative to neutral control is on average 74% the magnitude of the withinlanguage interference effect (consistent with the average obtained by MacLeod, 1991).…”

Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review.

“…Shortly after Dyer's study, Hamers (1973;Hamers & Lambert, 1972) used her auditory Stroop analog with French-English bilinguals and reached the same conclusion: The differentlanguage condition produced about 76% of the interference seen in the same-language condition. This pattern recurs for Spanish-English bilinguals in the picture-word task (Ehri & Ryan, 1980), French-English bilinguals in the flanker-word task (Guttentag et al, 1984), and diverse languages in the color-word task (e.g., Chinese-English and Japanese-English; Fang, Tzeng, & Alva, 1981;Turkish-English: Kiyak, 1982). Fang et al (1981) also confirmed that the ratio of between-language to withinlanguage interference declines as language similarity decreases.…”

“…This pattern recurs for Spanish-English bilinguals in the picture-word task (Ehri & Ryan, 1980), French-English bilinguals in the flanker-word task (Guttentag et al, 1984), and diverse languages in the color-word task (e.g., Chinese-English and Japanese-English; Fang, Tzeng, & Alva, 1981;Turkish-English: Kiyak, 1982). Fang et al (1981) also confirmed that the ratio of between-language to withinlanguage interference declines as language similarity decreases.…”