Abstract
This article provides an overview of bilingualism research on visual word recognition in isolation and in sentence context. Many studies investigating the processing of words out-of-context have shown that lexical representations from both languages are activated when reading in one language (language-non-selective lexical access). A newly developed research line asks whether language-non-selective access generalizes to word recognition in sentence contexts, providing a language cue and/or semantic constraint information for upcoming words. Recent studies suggest that the language of the preceding words is insufficient to restrict lexical access to words of the target language, even when reading in the native language. Eye tracking studies revealing the time course of word activation further showed that semantic constraint does not restrict language-non-selective access at early reading stages, but there is evidence that it has a relatively late effect. The theoretical implications for theories of bilingual word recognition are discussed in light of the Bilingual Interactive Activation+ model (Dijkstra and van Heuven, 2002).
Highlights
The task of reading is omnipresent in everyday life
Showed clear cognate effects in early reading stages, indicating that lexical restrictions only exert an influence during later stages of word recognition and after initial language-non-selective access had taken place
In order to account for the lexical restrictions, it may be necessary to assume a feedback mechanism from the language nodes to the orthographic level, so that language nodes can have a direct effect on lexical selection. This way, we assure the possibility of selectivity, constrained by semantic and lexical restrictions provided by a sentence context, in the fundamentally language-non-selective bilingual language system
Summary
The task of reading is omnipresent in everyday life. People can read in their native language without apparent difficulty. Recent eye tracking studies testing cognates (e.g., Libben and Titone, 2009; Van Assche et al, 2009; Titone et al, 2011) Showed clear cognate effects in early reading stages (reflected in measures such as first fixation duration and gaze duration), indicating that lexical restrictions only exert an influence during later stages of word recognition and after initial language-non-selective access had taken place.
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