Visual word recognition in bilinguals: Phonological priming from the second to the first language.

Abstract

In this study, the authors show that cross-lingual phonological priming is possible not only from the 1st language (L1) to the 2nd language (L2), but also from L2 to L1. In addition, both priming effects were found to have the same magnitude and to not be related to differences in word naming latencies between L1 and L2. The findings are further evidence against language-selective access models of bilingual word processing and are more in line with strong phonological models of visual word recognition than with the traditional dual-route models.Until 1990, the general idea was that bilinguals had two mental lexicons: one for the first language and one for the second. In addition, a language switch mechanism controlled which lexicon was active. Such an architecture of language selective access seemed ideal to explain why, in general, bilinguals do not experience interference problems from one language to the other. In recent years, however, evidence has accumulated showing that the first stages of visual word recognition are largely language independent and that the assumption of independent lexicons may be incorrect. Subsequently, we give a summary of this evidence (for further discussion, see Brysbaert, 1998;Brysbaert, Van Dyck, & Van de Poel, 1999;Dijkstra, Timmermans, & Schriefers, 2000;van Heuven, Dijkstra, & Grainger, 1998).First, in lexical decision tasks, it has been shown that bilingual participants cannot suppress one of their languages, even when the task strongly urges them to do so because of interference costs. For instance, it has been shown repeatedly that if the nonword trials contain words of the nontarget language, there are large processing costs associated with these trials (e.g., Nas, 1983). In addition, these trials have strong inhibitory effects on the processing of interlingual homographs (i.e., words that exist in both languages but have different meanings; De Groot, Delmaar, & Lupker, 2000;Dijkstra, Grainger, & van Heuven, 1999;Dijkstra, Van Jaarsveld, & Ten Brinke, 1998). The magnitude of the inhibitory effect depends on the relative frequency of the homograph in the target and the nontarget language. Recently, Dijkstra et al. (2000) reported that the frequency-dependent interference effect not only appears in a lexical decision task (e.g., for a Dutch-English bilingual, Is this a Dutch word or not?), but also in a go/no-go paradigm (e.g., Press on the key when the stimulus is a Dutch word only), despite that in the latter paradigm, there is little discussion that performance would be best if the nontarget language system were simply suppressed.Second, researchers have extended basic findings of monolingual language processing to bilingual processing. Bijeljac-Babic, Biardeau, and Grainger (1997), for instance, looked at the inhibition effect of orthographic neighbors. Previous research (e.g., Segui & Grainger, 1990) had shown that low-frequency target words are more difficult to recognize if, immediately before, a high-frequency orthographic neighbor has been presented tachistoscopica...

Automatic phonological activation during visual word recognition in bilingual children: A cross-language masked priming study in grades 3 and 5

“…The result of this present study is consistent with findings from studies of bilingual skilled readers (e.g., Brysbaert et al, 1999;Van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002) and suggests that language non-specific phonological activation emerges early in reading development.…”

“…Additionally, our results show that phonological representations are involved in visual word recognition among bilingual children, as is also the case for skilled bilingual readers (Brysbaert et al, 1999;Van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002), at least when both languages share the same alphabet. Further research could examine this issue when both languages have different alphabets (for instance, between Greek and French) and when both languages have different writing systems (for instance, between Chinese and English).…”

“…For example, for the Dutch prime pseudoword-French target word pair soer-SOURD [deaf], the Dutch orthography of the pseudoword prime soer (pronounced /syʀ/ in Dutch but /soɛ/ in French) activates the phonological code /syʀ/ and the French phonological code /soɛ/, which in turn facilitates the activation of the French word SOURD (pronounced /syʀ/ in French). Moreover, the effect size was the same in both priming directions, namely from first to second language and from second to first language (Brysbaert et al, 1999;Van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002; for similar results GreekSpanish bilinguals see also Dimitropoulou, Duñabeitia, & Carreiras, 2011). For example, phonological effects were found with pseudohomophone primes (e.g., Dutch-French primetarget pair, soer-SOURD) in Dutch-French and French-Dutch bilingual skilled-adult readers (Brysbaert et al, 1999;Van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002;see also Brysbaert, 2003;Brysbaert & Van Wijnendaele, 2003;Duyck, Diependaele, Drieghe, & Brysbaert, 2004).…”

“…Moreover, the effect size was the same in both priming directions, namely from first to second language and from second to first language (Brysbaert et al, 1999;Van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002; for similar results GreekSpanish bilinguals see also Dimitropoulou, Duñabeitia, & Carreiras, 2011). For example, phonological effects were found with pseudohomophone primes (e.g., Dutch-French primetarget pair, soer-SOURD) in Dutch-French and French-Dutch bilingual skilled-adult readers (Brysbaert et al, 1999;Van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002;see also Brysbaert, 2003;Brysbaert & Van Wijnendaele, 2003;Duyck, Diependaele, Drieghe, & Brysbaert, 2004). Similar results were found between alphabetic languages sharing the same script and also between alphabetic languages with different scripts.…”

“…Such masked phonological priming has been found with full phonological overlap between prime and target (e.g., klan-CLAN [clan] vs. slan-CLAN, pronounced /klɑ/-/klɑ/ vs /slɑ/-/klɑ/ respectively in French; Ferrand & Grainger, 1993) and with partial phonological overlap between prime and target (e.g., fomie-FAUCON [falcon] vs fémie-FAUCON, pronounced /fomi/-/fokɔ/ vs. /femi/-/fokɔ/ respectively in French; Carreiras et al, 2005). Masked phonological priming effects have been found in monolingual readers (e.g., Carreiras et al, 2005;Ferrand & Grainger, 1993;Grainger & Ferrand, 1994, 1996Lukatela et al, 2001;Lukatela et al, 1998;Perfetti et al, 1988;Ziegler et al, 2000; for a review see Rastle & Brysbaert, 2006) and also in bilingual readers in both their first and second language (in Dutch-French bilinguals, Brysbaert, Van Dyck, & Van de Poel, 1999;Van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002). Some masked priming studies have gone even further by investigating phonological priming across languages in bilingual skilled readers.…”