Orthographic Activation in L2 Spoken Word Recognition Depends on Proficiency: Evidence from Eye-Tracking.

Outi Veivo,Vincent Porretta,Jukka Hyönä,Juhani Järvikivi

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01120

Abstract

The use of orthographic and phonological information in spoken word recognition was studied in a visual world task where L1 Finnish learners of L2 French (n = 64) and L1 French native speakers (n = 24) were asked to match spoken word forms with printed words while their eye movements were recorded. In Experiment 1, French target words were contrasted with competitors having a longer (<base> vs. <bague>) or a shorter word initial phonological overlap (<base> vs. <bain>) and an identical orthographic overlap. In Experiment 2, target words were contrasted with competitors of either longer (<mince> vs. <mite>) or shorter word initial orthographic overlap (<mince> vs. <mythe>) and of an identical phonological overlap. A general phonological effect was observed in the L2 listener group but not in the L1 control group. No general orthographic effects were observed in the L2 or L1 groups, but a significant effect of proficiency was observed for orthographic overlap over time: higher proficiency L2 listeners used also orthographic information in the matching task in a time-window from 400 to 700 ms, whereas no such effect was observed for lower proficiency listeners. These results suggest that the activation of orthographic information in L2 spoken word recognition depends on proficiency in L2.

Highlights

A number of studies demonstrate an orthography influence on speech processing (Frost and Ziegler, 2007)
It is likely that orthographic effects obtained in this type of tasks result from different strategies of focusing on the sound structure of target words rather than from automatic activation (Damian and Bowers, 2009)
The results presented above show that in a task where orthography is masked from conscious processing, orthographic activation in L2 spoken word recognition depends on proficiency in L2 (Veivo and Järvikivi, 2013)

Summary

Introduction

A number of studies demonstrate an orthography influence on speech processing (Frost and Ziegler, 2007). As this is the case for the native language (L1) speakers who usually are exposed more to spoken than written language, we can assume that orthography could have an even more significant role in learning a second or foreign language (hereafter L2), especially in instructed learning contexts where learners are largely exposed to written language from the initial stages of the learning process. There is evidence for the automatic activation of orthography from tasks that do not demand an analysis of the phonological structure of spoken words. Further evidence for automatic activation of orthography during spoken word processing comes from studies where orthography is present, but masked form conscious processing, like auditory lexical decision with masked visual priming (Grainger et al, 2003)

Methods

Results

Conclusion