Role of Prior Language Context on Bilingual Spoken Word

The role of prior language context on bilingual spoken word processing: Evidence from the visual world task

Introduction:

The main topic of this paper is how cross-language activation and within-language activation is affected in spoken language processing in bilinguals depending on which language was most recently spoken. There were two opposing hypotheses that were tested. The first one is the language mode view, which states that the participants in the no switch condition (English -> English) should have a higher baseline activation for the words in the task. The participants in the switch condition should have higher level of cross-language competition. The second hypothesis is the language switching view which states that the language switch (French -> English) should help the participants to inhibit the non-target language and so the switch condition should have less cross-language interference than the no-switch group. In a study by Spivey and Marian (1999), they found that "cross-language effect to be significantly smaller than that found for within-language competition. The size of cross of the cross-language effect varied with factors such as whether the task occurred in L1 or L2, the age of acquisition, proficiency and frequency of exposure to the target and non-target languages" (Marian & Spivey, 2003a). Other work suggests that "cross-language differences in subtle acoustic cues can undermine cross-language competition, for example, when the voice onset time of particular consonants systematically differ across two languages." (Ju & Luce, 2004). Also it was found that "bilinguals with better inhibitory control showed less within- and cross-language competition than bilinguals who had weaker inhibitory control." (Mercier et al., 2014). What is not yet known is "whether and how they modulate activation of an entire language as a function of prior language exposure." (Grosjean, 2001, 2008). The authors tested two opposing hypotheses. The first is the language mode view, which states that the participants in the no switch condition should have a higher baseline activation for the words in the the task, while participants in the switch condition should have high levels of cross-language competition. The second is the language switching view, which states that the language switch should help the participants to inhibit the non-target language and so stating that the switch condition should have less cross-language interference than the no-switch group.    

Methods:

Fifty-seven English-French bilinguals were participants for this study. They participated for credit or for monetary compensation. The participants were between 18 and 35 years old with normal vision and had no speech or hearing disorders. Twenty-nine were native and dominant English speakers, while 28 participants had French as their native and dominant language. Half of the participants of each group were either assigned to a language production task in the same language as previously spoken (no-switch condition), and the other half were assigned to a switch condition. The stimulus used for this task had twenty item sets that included both spoken target and control words and also included six pictures. The two different spoken stimuli had target and control words, and before they were presented the participants were instructed to click on the picture with the name of the stimuli.

The participants first engaged in a language production task where they performed in either English or French. If they performed in English, this set them up for the no switch condition for the visual word task, and so if they performed in French they were set up for the switch condition. After the language production task, the participants then engaged in the visual world task which was followed by the second part of the language production task. The second part of the language production task was performed in the language not utilized before the visual world task. For the language production task, a modified version of the map task was used. The map task involves to partners having a conversation, and they both receive a map that the other cannot see. The participants take turns of either giving instructions or following instructions. The two maps given to the participants had discrepancies, that they both had to solve to get to the end point on the map. This task set up for the visual world task by fitting participants into either the switch or no switch condition. The map/ language production task lasted about 25 minutes.

Discussion:

It was investigated if speaking in one language has an effect on within- and cross-language lexical competition when listening to English in a spoken word processing task. Past research suggested that speaking the same or different language prior to a task that is performed in the same language can have different outcomes when it comes to the language competition in that task. The language switching view was what the results showed to prove. Bilinguals that were in the no-switch condition had more cross language competition as the switch condition showed an inhibitory control over the second language. This research contributes to our understanding of bilingualism as it backs up a specific theory. Also the results of this experiment contradict another experiment that had previously been conducted by Elston-Guttler (2005) that stated that "bilinguals could adapt to a target language by reducing cross-language competition when given enough time in a monolingual context through a gradual adaptation of the activation levels of each language." (Mercier, J., Pivneva, I., & Titone, D.). In other words, Elston-Guttler found that a language switch resulted in greater cross-language competition while the results of this experiment were that a language switch results in less cross-language competition. There may have been several reasons for the differences between these two studies however. This study clarifies and improves understanding of the effect of language context on inhibitory control. In this study, there were many limitations listed. One of the limitations that were discussed in this study is that the language switch was only tested in one direction, from French to English. This poses a problem because English was not the most proficient language of all of the participants. Another limitation is that the visual world task might have been more difficult for native French speakers than native English speakers. Overall, this study sheds light on the role of language context and cross-language activation as well as inhibitory control strategies.

References:

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