Does bilingual fluency moderate the disruption effect of cultural cues on second-language processing?

Abstract

Zhang et al. (1) argue that cultural priming disrupts bilinguals’ second-language (L2) processing because of interference from first-language (L1) structures that are activated by heritage-culture images. Although these findings are compelling, we have some concerns about the study. First, Zhang et al. (1) measured English fluency by words spoken per minute after extraneous words (e.g., repetitions and self-corrections) were pruned. Despite the assumed effectiveness of this technique, speech-rate analysis that focuses solely on temporal qualities cannot adequately capture the multifaceted nature of fluency (2), which entails not only speed fluency (i.e., speech rate) but also breakdown fluency (e.g., mean length of pauses) and repair fluency (e.g., … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. E-mail: sy98{at}cornell.edu or hjyang{at}smu.edu.sg. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1