Cross-language Activation Research Articles

Cross-language activation and semantic judgements of translation ambiguous words among Chinese–English bilinguals

Aims and Objectives: Translation ambiguous words are lexical items with one-to-many equivalents in another language. Some of these equivalents are more dominant (i.e., more frequently used) than others. The aim of the present study is to explore non-target language activation of translation ambiguous words among Chinese–English bilinguals. Methodology: The implicit priming paradigm was used in three experiments to explore the activation of primary and secondary first language (L1) translations when bilinguals process second language (L2) translation ambiguous words (Experiment 1); the effect of L1 translation repetition on the processing of semantically related words in an L2 (Experiment 2); and whether such patterns are observed in the reverse direction, that is, whether L2 primary translations are activated when processing L1 translation ambiguous words (Experiment 3). Data and Analysis: We use repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVAs) to analyse the data. Findings/conclusions: Experiment 1 showed that when processing pairs of semantically unrelated (SU) L2 words, primary L1 translation equivalents are activated, but not secondary L1 translation equivalents. Experiment 2 found that when the target L2 words were semantically related, performance was facilitated when their translation equivalents were the same L1 word (i.e., implicitly repeated). Similarly, Experiment 3 showed that when processing L1 words, the L2 translation equivalents are automatically activated. Moreover, under semantically related conditions, implicit repetition of the non-target L2 translation facilitated L1 judgements, while under SU conditions, L2 implicit repetition hampered L1 judgements. Originality: Most research on cross-language activation has examined L1 activation during L2 processing. However, few have investigated the reverse and findings from these few studies are inconsistent. Moreover, research on cross-language activation has mainly investigated the activation of primary translation equivalents, with very little focus on secondary translations. The present study uses the implicit priming paradigm to address these gaps in the literature. Significance: The findings support interactive theories of bilingual processing.

Parafoveal processing in bilingual readers: Semantic access within but not across languages.

Prior research has investigated the quality of information a reader can extract from upcoming parafoveal words. However, very few studies have considered parafoveal processing in bilingual readers, who may differ from monolinguals due to slower lexical access and susceptibility to cross-language activation. This eye-tracking experiment, therefore, investigated how bilingual readers process parafoveal semantic information within and across languages. We used the boundary technique to replace a preview word in a sentence with a different target word during the first rightward saccade from the pretarget region. We manipulated both preview language (nonswitch vs. code-switch) and semantic relatedness (synonym/translation vs. unrelated) between previews and targets. Upon fixation, target words always appeared in the same language as the rest of the sentence to create an essentially monolingual language context. Semantic preview benefits emerged for nonswitched synonym previews but not for code-switched translation previews. Furthermore, participants skipped code-switched previews less often than nonswitched previews and no more often than previews that were unfamiliar to them. These data suggest that bilinguals can extract within-language semantic information from the parafovea in both native and nonnative languages, but that cross-language words are not accessible while reading in a monolingual language mode, as per the partial selectivity hypothesis of bilingual language control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Cross-language activation of idiom meanings: Evidence from French– Vietnamese– and Indonesian–English bilinguals

Abstract The aim of the present study was to determine whether bilinguals activate the figurative meaning of an idiom that is specific to one language when they are exposed to its translation in their other language. We used a cross-modal priming task in which participants heard L2 English sentences that ended with an idiom translated from their L1. They then saw a visually presented stimulus that was either related to the meaning of the L1 idiom, a matched control word, or a nonword, and made a lexical decision. Three experiments were run, each with a different group of bilinguals (French–English, Vietnamese–English, and Indonesian–English), and each with a monolingual English control group. In all three studies, the effect of relatedness for bilinguals and monolinguals differed, demonstrating cross-language activation of idiom meanings. Evidence was obtained that suggested that culture-specific information in idioms influenced processing.

Visual recognition of identical cognates involves sublexical inhibition and lexical facilitation.

The study investigated the consequences of cross-language activation on the time course of bilingual word recognition. Twenty-two Spanish-English bilinguals and 21 English monolingual controls decided whether visually presented letter strings were English words, while behavioral and event-related potential responses were recorded. The language status of words was manipulated experimentally, such that words were either identical cognates between English and Spanish (e.g. CLUB) or noncognates (e.g. CLOCK). Participants were equally fast in responding to cognate and noncognate words. Bilinguals were more accurate in responding to cognates, whereas monolinguals exhibited higher accuracy in response to noncognates. Critically, bilinguals produced larger P200 followed by smaller N400 responses to cognates than noncognates, whereas monolinguals showed a pattern of reduced N400 responses to cognates. The results of the current study indicate that cross-language activation may not only result in lexical facilitation (indexed by a reduction of the N400 response to cognates) as a result of shared form-meaning associations across languages but also in sublexical inhibition (indexed by a larger P200 response to cognates) as a consequence of cross-language competition among phonological forms. Results support the language-nonselective view of bilingual lexical access and suggest that while lexical facilitation for identical cognates may be observed at most levels of second language proficiency, sublexical inhibition in response to identical cognates may be a marker of advanced levels of proficiency.

L2 activation during L1 processing is increased by exposure but decreased by proficiency

Aims: The study investigates the effects of L2 proficiency and L2 exposure on L2-to-L1 cross-language activation (CLA) in L1-dominant bilinguals. In so doing, it tests the predictions made by prominent models of the bilingual lexicon regarding how language experience modulates CLA. Design: The participants (27 L1-dominant L1 English–L2 Afrikaans speakers) completed a visual world eye-tracking task, conducted entirely in English, in which they saw four objects on a screen: a target object, which they were instructed to click on; a competitor object, whose Afrikaans label overlapped phonetically at onset with the English target object label; and two unrelated distractors. Language background data were collected using the Language History Questionnaire 3.0. Analysis: A growth curve analysis was performed to investigate the extent to which the background variables modulated looks to the Afrikaans competitor item versus to the two unrelated distractor items. Findings: Increased L2 exposure was associated with greater CLA, which is consistent with models suggesting that exposure modulates the likelihood and speed with which a linguistic item becomes activated. Moreover, CLA was reduced at higher levels of L2 proficiency, which aligns with accounts of the bilingual lexicon positing that parasitism of the L2 on the L1 is reduced at higher proficiency levels, leading to reduced CLA. Originality: L2 activation during L1 processing and the variables that modulate it are not well documented, particularly among L1 speakers with limited proficiency in and exposure to the L2. Significance: The findings contribute to the evaluation of competing accounts of bilingual lexical organization.

Bidirectional cross-linguistic influence with different-script languages: Evidence from eye tracking

AbstractThis study compared patterns of nonselective cross-language activation in L1 and L2 visual word recognition with different-script bilinguals. The aim was to determine (1) whether lexical processing is nonselective in the L1 (as in L2), and (2) if the same cross-linguistic factors affected processing similarly in each language. To examine the time course of activation, eye movements were tracked during lexical decision. Thirty-two Japanese–English bilinguals responded to 250 target words in Japanese and in English. The same participants and items (i.e., cognate translation equivalents) were used to directly compare L1 and L2 processing. Response latencies as well as eye movements representing early and late processing were analyzed using mixed-effects regression modeling. Similar cross-linguistic effects, namely cognate word frequency, phonological similarity, and semantic similarity, were found in both languages. These factors affected processing to different degrees in each language, however. While cognate frequency was significant as early as the first fixation, effects of cross-linguistic phonological and semantic similarity arose later in time. Increased phonological similarity slowed responses in L2 but speeded them in L1, while greater semantic overlap was facilitatory in both languages. Results are discussed from the perspective of the BIA+ model of visual word recognition.

Cross-script L1–L2 and L2–L1 masked translation priming and phonological priming: Evidence from unbalanced Korean–English bilinguals

Aims: Despite a history of research in translation-equivalent priming (either cognate or noncognate and phonological priming with cross-script languages), research with Korean–English bilinguals is very scarce. In this study, we report two masked-priming lexical decision tasks in both directions with Korean–English unbalanced bilinguals, investigating whether cross-language activation occurs depending on different types of cognate, noncognate, and homophone prime–target pairs, the degree of phonological similarity between prime and target, and how L2 proficiency influences each type of priming. Methodology: Two experiments were conducted using a masked translation priming paradigm with unbalanced Korean–English bilinguals: Experiment 1 in the L2–L1 direction and Experiment 2 in the L1–L2 direction. Each experiment used a total of 96 prime–target pairs of cognates, noncognates, and homophones, and 60 subjects for each experiment were asked to judge whether the items were real words or not in a lexical decision task. Data and analysis: Linear mixed-effects models were used to investigate the effects of priming in each condition, the effect of phonological similarity on cognate translation priming, and L2 proficiency. Findings/conclusions: Our results showed that both cognate translation priming and noncognate translation priming arose in the L1–L2 direction, but the phonological priming was not found. In the L2–L1 direction, on the contrary, cognate translation priming and phonological priming effects were observed, but not the noncognate translation priming. Also, the degree of phonological similarity influenced the magnitude of cognate translation priming effects in both directions with a different pattern, supporting for the phonological overlap account between different-script languages. The current study is compatible with the language nonselective activation view and suggests the shared phonological representations even between different-script languages. The results are discussed within several current bilingual lexical processing models.

Cross-modal and cross-language activation in bilinguals reveals lexical competition even when words or signs are unheard or unseen

We exploit the phenomenon of cross-modal, cross-language activation to examine the dynamics of language processing. Previous within-language work showed that seeing a sign coactivates phonologically related signs, just as hearing a spoken word coactivates phonologically related words. In this study, we conducted a series of eye-tracking experiments using the visual world paradigm to investigate the time course of cross-language coactivation in hearing bimodal bilinguals (Spanish-Spanish Sign Language) and unimodal bilinguals (Spanish/Basque). The aim was to gauge whether (and how) seeing a sign could coactivate words and, conversely, how hearing a word could coactivate signs and how such cross-language coactivation patterns differ from within-language coactivation. The results revealed cross-language, cross-modal activation in both directions. Furthermore, comparison with previous findings of within-language lexical coactivation for spoken and signed language showed how the impact of temporal structure changes in different modalities. Spoken word activation follows the temporal structure of that word only when the word itself is heard; for signs, the temporal structure of the sign does not govern the time course of lexical access (location coactivation precedes handshape coactivation)-even when the sign is seen. We provide evidence that, instead, this pattern of activation is motivated by how common in the lexicon the sublexical units of the signs are. These results reveal the interaction between the perceptual properties of the explicit signal and structural linguistic properties. Examining languages across modalities illustrates how this interaction impacts language processing.

Bi-directional cross-language activation in Chinese Sign Language (CSL)-Chinese bimodal bilinguals

In bilingual word recognition, cross-language activation has been found in unimodal bilinguals (e.g., Chinese-English bilinguals) and bimodal bilinguals (e.g., American Sign language-English bilinguals). However, it remains unclear how signs' phonological parameters, spoken words' orthographic and phonological representation, and language proficiency affect cross-language activation in bimodal bilinguals. To resolve the issues, we recruited deaf Chinese sign language (CSL)-Chinese bimodal bilinguals as participants. We conducted two experiments with the implicit priming paradigm and the semantic relatedness decision task. Experiment 1 first showed cross-language activation from Chinese to CSL, and the CSL words' phonological parameter affected the cross-language activation. Experiment 2 further revealed inverse cross-language activation from CSL to Chinese. The Chinese words' orthographic and phonological representation played a similar role in the cross-language activation. Moreover, a comparison between Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that language proficiency influenced cross-language activation. The findings were further discussed with the Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus (BIA+) model, the deaf BIA+ model, and the Bilingual Language Interaction Network for Comprehension of Speech (BLINCS) model.

Factors affecting cross-language activation and language mixing in bilingual aphasia: A case study

ABSTRACT Background Some bilinguals with aphasia tend to mix languages within a single utterance. Two opposing views attribute this to difficulty with either language control or word retrieval. Aims This study investigated the influence of factors that increase activation of the non-target language on the occurrence of language mixing errors. This increased activation predicts more language mixing errors if there is a language control issue, but not if they stem from word retrieval difficulties. Methods and procedures A picture naming experiment was conducted with a bilingual individual with aphasia who showed language mixing. We investigated the influence of four factors likely to influence activation of representations of the non-target language on response accuracy, response latency and the occurrence of language selection errors: language, language mode, task, and phonological overlap between the target word and its translation equivalent. Outcomes and results The increased activation of the non-target language induced by language mode, task and phonological overlap with the translation equivalent did not lead to an increase in language selection errors when compared to correct responses. This is despite the fact that these factors affected accuracy and response latency, in the direction that is expected in unimpaired bilingual performance. Conclusions Results were not consistent with a disruption of the cognitive control needed to respond in the intended language. Instead, they highlight that language mixing in this individual, rather than being “pathological”, is instead used as a strategy to potentially improve communication when lexical retrieval difficulties occur. Language mixing behaviours in aphasia may not be due to issues of control and have a communicative value that should be recognised.

Cross-language activation during word recognition in child second-language learners and the role of executive function

We investigated lexical retrieval processes in 4- to 6-year-old German–English bilinguals by exploring cross-language activation during second-language (L2) word recognition of cognates and noncognates in semantically related and unrelated contexts in young learners of English. Both button presses (reaction times and accuracies) and eye-tracking data (percentage looks to target) yielded a significant cognate facilitation effect, indicating that the children’s performance was boosted by cognate words. Nonetheless, the degree of phonological overlap of cognates did not modulate their performance. Moreover, a semantic interference effect was found in the children’s eye movement data. However, in these young L2 learners, cognate status exerted a comparatively stronger impact on L2 word recognition than semantic relatedness. Finally, correlational analyses on the cognate and noncognate performance and the children’s executive function yielded a significant positive correlation between noncognate performance and their inhibitory control, suggesting that noncognate processing depended to a greater extent on inhibitory control than cognate processing.

Modulation of Cross-Language Activation During Bilingual Auditory Word Recognition: Effects of Language Experience but Not Competing Background Noise.

Previous research has shown that as the level of background noise increases, auditory word recognition performance drops off more rapidly for bilinguals than monolinguals. This disproportionate bilingual deficit has often been attributed to a presumed increase in cross-language activation in noise, although no studies have specifically tested for such an increase. We propose two distinct mechanisms by which background noise could cause an increase in cross-language activation: a phonetically based account and an executive function-based account. We explore the evidence for the phonetically based account by comparing cognate facilitation effects for three groups of native English listeners (monolinguals, late (L2) learners of Spanish, and heritage Spanish speakers) and four noise conditions (no noise, speech-shaped noise, English two-talker babble, and Spanish two-talker babble) during an auditory lexical decision task in English. By examining word recognition in the dominant language, the role of language control mechanisms is minimized, and by examining three different types of competing noise, the role of energetic vs. informational masking can be assessed. Contrary to predictions, we find no evidence that background noise modulates cross-language activation; cognate facilitation is constant across the four noise conditions. Instead, several indices of word recognition performance are found to correlate with aspects of linguistic experience: (1) The magnitude of the cognate facilitation effect is correlated with heritage listeners’ self-ratings of Spanish proficiency; (2) Overall noise deficits are marginally larger for heritage listeners with lower English vocabulary scores; (3) Heritage listeners’ Spanish self-ratings predict their magnitude of informational masking; (4) For all bilinguals, the degree of masking incurred in both English and Spanish two-talker babble is correlated with self-reported daily exposure to Spanish; and (5) The degree of masking incurred by Spanish babble is correlated with Spanish vocabulary knowledge. The results enrich our understanding of auditory word recognition in heritage speakers in particular and provide evidence that informational masking is most subject to modulation due to variation in linguistic experience. It remains to be seen whether cross-language activation is modulated by noise when the target language is the less dominant one.

Cross-language activation in bimodal bilinguals: Do mouthings affect the co-activation of speech during sign recognition?

AbstractThe present study provides insight into cross-language activation in hearing bimodal bilinguals by (1) examining co-activation of spoken words during processing of signs by hearing bimodal bilingual users of Dutch (their L1) and Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT; late learners) and (2) investigating the contribution of mouthings to bimodal cross-language activation. NGT signs were presented with or without mouthings in two sign-picture verification experiments. In both experiments the phonological relation (unrelated, cohort overlap or final rhyme overlap) between the Dutch translation equivalents of the NGT signs and pictures was manipulated. Across both experiments, the results showed slower responses for sign-picture pairs with final rhyme overlap relative to phonologically unrelated sign-picture pairs, indicating co-activation of the spoken language during sign processing, but no significant effect for sign-picture pairs with cohort overlap in Dutch. In addition, co-activation was not affected by the presence or absence of mouthings.

영어 L2 학습자의 어휘부 활성화: 평행성을 중심으로

It is well established that multiple words with phonetic similarities are activated in the monolingual processing of spoken words. Yet relatively less is known about cross-language activation of phonetically similar words in the bilingual minds. The present study explored cross-language activation of mental lexicon in the spoken word processing of Korean learners of English (i.e., Korean L1-English L2 group). The data from Korean learners of English group were compared with those from native speakers of English (i.e.,English L1 only group). In the experimental task, they were asked to listen to spoken words in English while looking at a display with a target picture, a competitor picture whose Korean translation was phonetically overlapped with the target object, and two pictures of unrelated distractors. Their eye movements were analyzed. The Korean L1-English L2 group looked more often at the pictures of cross-language competitor than English L1 only group did. This finding strongly suggests the presence of non-selective access to both lexicons among the Korean learners of English during the spoken word processing in English. Namely, both L1 and L2 lexicons are spontaneously activated even when they were asked to process the spoken words in L2.(Kyung Hee University)

Eye Movement Measures of Within-Language and Cross-Language Activation During Reading in Monolingual and Bilingual Children and Adults: A Focus on Neighborhood Density Effects.

We used eye movement measures of first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) paragraph reading to investigate how the activation of multiple lexical candidates, both within and across languages, influences visual word recognition in four different age and language groups: (1) monolingual children; (2) monolingual young adults; (3) bilingual children; and (4) bilingual young adults. More specifically, we focused on within-language and cross-language orthographic neighborhood density effects, while controlling for the potentially confounding effects of orthographic neighborhood frequency. We found facilitatory within-language orthographic neighborhood density effects (i.e., words were easier to process when they had many vs. few orthographic neighbors, evidenced by shorter fixation durations) across the L1 and L2, with larger effects in children vs. adults (especially the bilingual ones) during L1 reading. Similarly, we found facilitatory cross-language neighborhood density effects across the L1 and L2, with no modulatory influence of age or language group. Taken together, our findings suggest that word recognition benefits from the simultaneous activation of visually similar word forms during naturalistic reading, with some evidence of larger effects in children and particularly those whose words may have differentially lower baseline activation levels and/or weaker links between word-related information due to divided language exposure: bilinguals.

What Are the Modulators of Cross-Language Syntactic Activation During Natural Reading?

Bilinguals juggle knowledge of multiple languages, including syntactic constructions that can mismatch (e.g., the red car, la voiture rouge; Mary sees it, Mary le voit). We used eye-tracking to examine whether French-English (n = 23) and English-French (n = 21) bilingual adults activate non-target language syntax during English L2 (Experiment 1) and L1 (Experiment 2) reading, and whether this differed from functionally monolingual English reading (Experiment 3, n = 26). People read English sentences containing syntactic constructions that were either partially shared across languages (adjective-noun constructions) or completely unshared (object-pronoun constructions). These constructions were presented in an intact form, or in a violated form that was French-consistent or French-inconsistent. For both L2 and L1 reading, bilinguals read French-consistent adjective-noun violations relatively quickly, suggesting cross-language activation. This did not occur when the same people read object-pronoun constructions manipulated in the same manner. Surprisingly, English readers exposed to French in their lifetime but functionally monolingual, also read French-consistent violations for adjective-noun constructions faster, particularly for some items. However, when we controlled for item differences in the L2 and L1 reading data, cross-language effects observed were similar to the original data pattern. Moreover, individual differences in L2 experience modulated both L2 and L1 reading for adjective-noun constructions, consistent with a cross-language activation interpretation of the data. These findings are consistent with the idea of syntactic cross-language activation during reading for some constructions. However, for several reasons, cross-language syntactic activation during comprehension may be overall more variable and challenging to investigate methodologically compared to past work on other forms of cross-language activation (i.e., single words).

Cross-language activation of culture-specific features in Chinese–English bilinguals

Cross-language activation of culture-specific features in Chinese–English bilinguals

The impact of a discourse context on bilingual cross-language lexical activation

AbstractFour hypotheses regarding the impact of discourse context on cross-language lexical activation were tested. Highly-proficient, Spanish–English bilinguals read all-English paragraphs containing non-identical and identical cognates or noncognate controls while their eye-movements were tracked. There were four paragraph conditions based on a full crossing of semantic bias from the topic sentence and sentence containing the critical word. In analyses in which cognate status was treated categorically there was an interaction between global bias and cognates status such that the observed inhibitory effects of cognate status were attenuated in global-neutral contexts. Follow-up analyses on the non-identical cognates in which orthographic overlap was treated continuously revealed a U-shaped function between orthographic overlap and processing time, which was more pronounced in global-neutral contexts. The overall pattern of findings is consistent with a combined operation of resonant-based and feature-restriction mechanisms of context effects.

Finding a “flower” in a “peanut” is as easy as in a “garden”: towards a lemma-based model of bilingual word recognition

ABSTRACT The present study investigates how morphological information is processed and represented in the bilingual lexicon. We employed a masked cross-language morphological priming paradigm to examine morphological decomposition and semantic transparency in bilingual lexical processing. A robust and reliable morphological priming effect was observed for both transparent compounds and opaque compounds, though there was a strong trend for more facilitation in the former than the latter. To account for these results, we propose a lemma-based bilingual model specifying the activation/competition between lemmas during cross-language activation at the morphological level. Our novel findings advance the understanding of interplay between morphology and bilingualism.

Language development in deaf bilinguals: Deaf middle school students co-activate written English and American Sign Language during lexical processing

Bilinguals, both hearing and deaf, activate multiple languages simultaneously even in contexts that require only one language. To date, the point in development at which bilingual signers experience cross-language activation of a signed and a spoken language remains unknown. We investigated the processing of written words by ASL-English bilingual deaf middle school students. Deaf bilinguals were faster to respond to English word pairs with phonologically related translations in ASL than to English word pairs with unrelated translations, but no difference was found for hearing controls with no knowledge of ASL. The results indicate that co-activation of signs and written words is not the outcome of years of bilingual experience, but instead characterizes bilingual language development.