Abstract
The present study examined the role of script in bilingual speech planning by comparing the performance of same and different-script bilinguals. Spanish-English bilinguals (Experiment 1) and Japanese-English bilinguals (Experiment 2) performed a picture-word interference task in which they were asked to name a picture of an object in English, their second language, while ignoring a visual distractor word in Spanish or Japanese, their first language. Results replicated the general pattern seen in previous bilingual picture-word interference studies for the same-script, Spanish-English bilinguals but not for the different-script, Japanese-English bilinguals. Both groups showed translation facilitation, whereas only Spanish-English bilinguals demonstrated semantic interference, phonological facilitation, and phono-translation facilitation. These results suggest that when the script of the language not in use is present in the task, bilinguals appear to exploit the perceptual difference as a language cue to direct lexical access to the intended language earlier in the process of speech planning.
Highlights
Bilinguals are able to speak each language without apparent intrusion of the other language, experimental studies demonstrate that both languages are active even when utterances are planned in one language alone and that bilinguals eventually select the intended language
In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals showed the effect of all the distractor types—phonological facilitation, semantic interference, translation facilitation, and phono-translation facilitation
We replicated a general pattern of the results of previous bilingual picture-word interference studies for Spanish-English bilinguals, one issue that requires additional discussion concerns the phono-translation effect
Summary
Bilinguals are able to speak each language without apparent intrusion of the other language, experimental studies demonstrate that both languages are active even when utterances are planned in one language alone and that bilinguals eventually select the intended language (see Costa, 2005; Kroll et al, 2006, Kroll et al, 2008, for reviews). The question we ask in the present paper is whether differences in the written script of two languages can effectively reduce activation of the language not in use to allow bilinguals to select the target language, the language of production, earlier in the process of speech planning. If bilinguals can exploit cross-language differences to enable lexical access to be language selective, they may be better able to constrain the scope of competition and reduce functional demands on control processes.
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