Bilinguals implicitly name objects in both their languages: an ERP study.

Katie Von Holzen,Nivedita Mani

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01415

Abstract

Upon being presented with a familiar name-known image, monolingual infants and adults implicitly generate the image's label (Meyer et al., 2007; Mani and Plunkett, 2010, 2011; Mani et al., 2012a). Although the cross-linguistic influences on overt bilingual production are well studied (for a summary see Colomé and Miozzo, 2010), evidence that bilinguals implicitly generate the label for familiar objects in both languages remains mixed. For example, bilinguals implicitly generate picture labels in both of their languages, but only when tested in L2 and not L1 (Wu and Thierry, 2011) or when immersed in their L2 (Spivey and Marian, 1999; Marian and Spivey, 2003a,b) but not when immersed in their L1 (Weber and Cutler, 2004). The current study tests whether bilinguals implicitly generate picture labels in both of their languages when tested in their L1 with a cross-modal ERP priming paradigm. The results extend previous findings by showing that not just do bilinguals implicitly generate the labels for visually fixated images in both of their languages when immersed in their L1, but also that these implicitly generated labels in one language can prime recognition of subsequently presented auditory targets across languages (i.e., L2–L1). The current study provides support for cascaded models of lexical access during speech production, as well as a new priming paradigm for the study of bilingual language processing.

Highlights

Research on speech production has awarded considerable attention to the stages involved in a speaker’s selection of an appropriate lexical item(s) to communicate her message
Most models of speech production agree that the search for the appropriate lexical item in production lends activation to items semantically related to the chosen word, either through activation of semantic features shared by the words or through activation of the corresponding lexical nodes of the semantically related words (Dell, 1986; Levelt, 1989; Roelofs, 1992; Caramazza, 1997)
These results significantly extend previous findings to strongly support suggestions that (a) implicit generation of the labels of visually fixated images in both languages of bilinguals immersed in their L1 environment and (b) L2 prime labels influencing recognition of L1 target words, despite the experiment being carried out in an L1 environment with only L1 stimuli being used in the experiment

Summary

Introduction

Research on speech production has awarded considerable attention to the stages involved in a speaker’s selection of an appropriate lexical item(s) to communicate her message. This work has examined how a speaker selects one word among other appropriate partially activated words for production, whether these other activated words interact with the speakers’ choice and production of the chosen word, and the extent to which the phonological and semantic features of these other activated words are retrieved during speech production. Models of speech production disagree, with regard to the extent to which the phonological features associated with these competing lexical nodes are retrieved in speaking. Discrete models of speech production suggest that while semantically related lexical nodes are simultaneously activated, phonological activation is restricted to the selected lexical node alone (Levelt, 1989; Levelt et al, 1999). Cascaded models of lexical access assume that the phonological properties of semantically related lexical nodes are all simultaneously activated (Dell, 1986; Caramazza, 1997; Dell et al, 1997)

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