Spanish-English Bilinguals Research Articles

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.

Figurative language: advances and new research perspectives (Lenguaje figurado: avances y nuevas perspectivas investigativas)

ABSTRACT This introduction presents the studies that make up volume 42, issue 2, of the journal Studies in Psychology. The first part comprises studies from the fields of psycholinguistics and cognitive neuropsychology of language. They address the processing of highly creative metaphors, comprehension of idioms in English–Spanish bilinguals, impairments in the processing of metaphors and idioms in people with aphasia and dementia, and, finally, a critical look at various accounts of the ‘literalist bias’ in the Autism Spectrum Disorder. The second part contains articles dealing with the main assumptions of the so-called conventional figurative language theory, the linguistic expression of aesthetic emotions, the use of subversive humour to vindicate the role of women in present-day society and, to conclude, an ontogenetic perspective on the emergence of humour in school-aged children.

Insights into codeswitching from online communication: Effects of language preference and conditions arising from vocabulary richness

AbstractTwitter data from a crisis that impacted many English–Spanish bilinguals show that the direction of codeswitches is associated with the statistically documented tendency of single speakers to prefer one language over another in their tweets, as gleaned from their tweeting history. Further, lexical diversity, a measure of vocabulary richness derived from information-theoretic measures of uncertainty in communication, is greater in proximity to a codeswitch than in productions remote from a switch. The prospects of a role for lexical diversity in characterizing the conditions for a language switch suggest that communicative precision may induce conditions that attenuate constraints against language mixing.

A multidimensional approach to Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers’ narrative skills (Un enfoque multidimensional de las habilidades narrativas de los niños preescolares bilingües inglés/español)

ABSTRACT We identify language and discourse skills in 54-month-old Spanish–English bilingual preschoolers and their English-speaking monolingual peers, using multiple measures. Forty-one Spanish–English bilingual and 25 English monolingual children, all US born, viewed an eight-minute wordless video. The bilingual children recounted the story once in English and once in Spanish, in counterbalanced order. The story retellings were transcribed and coded for discourse skills (narrative length, narrative components and uses of evaluative language) and language skills (number of words, number of different words, MLUw). No difference was found in the two groups´ overall language or discourse skills, assessed in the narrative production, with the exception of certain uses of evaluative language. Within the bilingual group, all measures, except MLUw, were highly correlated across the two languages. Our multidimensional analysis of narrative structure and use of evaluative language sheds light on certain differences between the ways in which English monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals organize their narrative discourse. We discuss the advantages of using this multidimensional approach in assessing bilinguals´ language and discourse abilities in narrative production.

Automaticity of lexical access in deaf and hearing bilinguals: Cross-linguistic evidence from the color Stroop task across five languages

The well-known Stroop interference effect has been instrumental in revealing the highly automated nature of lexical processing as well as providing new insights to the underlying lexical organization of first and second languages within proficient bilinguals. The present cross-linguistic study had two goals: 1) to examine Stroop interference for dynamic signs and printed words in deaf ASL-English bilinguals who report no reliance on speech or audiological aids; 2) to compare Stroop interference effects in several groups of bilinguals whose two languages range from very distinct to very similar in their shared orthographic patterns: ASL-English bilinguals (very distinct), Chinese-English bilinguals (low similarity), Korean-English bilinguals (moderate similarity), and Spanish-English bilinguals (high similarity). Reaction time and accuracy were measured for the Stroop color naming and word reading tasks, for congruent and incongruent color font conditions. Results confirmed strong Stroop interference for both dynamic ASL stimuli and English printed words in deaf bilinguals, with stronger Stroop interference effects in ASL for deaf bilinguals who scored higher in a direct assessment of ASL proficiency. Comparison of the four groups of bilinguals revealed that the same-script bilinguals (Spanish-English bilinguals) exhibited significantly greater Stroop interference effects for color naming than the other three bilingual groups. The results support three conclusions. First, Stroop interference effects are found for both signed and spoken languages. Second, contrary to some claims in the literature about deaf signers who do not use speech being poor readers, deaf bilinguals' lexical processing of both signs and written words is highly automated. Third, cross-language similarity is a critical factor shaping bilinguals' experience of Stroop interference in their two languages. This study represents the first comparison of both deaf and hearing bilinguals on the Stroop task, offering a critical test of theories about bilingual lexical access and cognitive control.

Priming and persistence in bilinguals: What codeswitching tells us about lexical priming in sentential contexts*

AbstractMost studies on lexical priming have examined single words presented in isolation, despite language users rarely encountering words in such cases. The present study builds upon this by examining both within-language identity priming and across-language translation priming in sentential contexts. Highly proficient Spanish–English bilinguals read sentence-question pairs, where the sentence contained the prime and the question contained the target. At earlier stages of processing, we find evidence only of within-language identity priming; at later stages of processing, however, across-language translation priming surfaces, and becomes as strong as within-language identity priming. Increasing the time between the prime sentence and target question results in strengthened priming at the latest stages of processing. These results replicate previous findings at the single-word level but do so within sentential contexts, which has implications both for accounts of priming via automatic spreading activation as well as for accounts of persistence attested in spontaneous speech corpora.

A novel approach to assessing language proficiency in adults: A pre-pilot classification accuracy study

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Speech–language pathologists who speak more than one language and who are members of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association self-identify in one yes/no question whether they have the proficiency level to be bilingual service providers. This research note describes a preliminary attempt to address the very practical issue of whether and in what circumstances Spanish–English bilinguals can accurately judge their proficiency levels in both languages. The research question is: Will bilingual adults accurately identify their first language and second language proficiency levels using a self-assessment when compared to a commonly used standardized norm-referenced test (SNRT) in both formal and informal contexts across the following outcome measures: (a) overall proficiency; (b) listening; (c) speaking; (d) reading; and (e) writing? Design/methodology/approach: Classification accuracy studies require at least 34 participants. Thirty-nine participants completed the commonly used Language Use Questionnaire (LUQ) self-assessment and the commonly used Woodcock–Muñoz Language Survey SNRT (WMLS-III). For this pre-pilot study, participants were Spanish–English bilingual university students. Data and analysis: Forty likelihood ratios (LRs) were calculated. Benchmarks for interpreting LRs for classification accuracy studies were applied to identify the likelihood of an individual being proficient or non-proficient in two languages. Findings/conclusions: For the overall proficiency and formal speaking proficiency outcomes in Spanish, positive LRs met the benchmark for strong agreement. Originality: The current study is the first to show that Spanish–English bilingual adults can accurately judge their Spanish proficiency levels for two specific outcome measures. Significance/implications: These results are important for two reasons. First, they suggest that Spanish–English bilingual adults can accurately judge their overall proficiency levels in Spanish. Second, they identify which outcome measures from the LUQ and WMLS-III should be considered in a future classification accuracy study.

Is codeswitching easy or difficult? Testing processing cost through the prosodic structure of bilingual speech

A common practice often attested in bilingual and multilingual communities the world over is the combination of languages within a single utterance or conversation, a practice known as codeswitching. While sociolinguistic studies of spontaneous codeswitching have demonstrated its structure and systematicity, psycholinguistic approaches have focused on the cognitive mechanisms underlying language switching, most often at the lexical level. In the present study, we seek to investigate these mechanisms using spontaneous codeswitching from an established community of Spanish-English bilinguals in northern New Mexico. Focusing on the clausal rather than the lexical level, we find that global speech rates are fastest when bilinguals codeswitch compared to speaking only one language at a time. These results point to codeswitching as a unique discourse mode that these bilinguals use to facilitate production and suggests that what may appear costly at one level may be beneficial at another.

Intelligibility of first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) speech by switched-dominance Spanish-English bilinguals.

Recordings of Spanish and English sentences by switched-dominance bilingual (SDB) Spanish (i.e., L2-dominant Spanish-English bilinguals) and by L1-dominant Spanish and English controls were presented to L1-dominant Spanish and English listeners, respectively. At –4 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), Spanish and English productions by SDBs were equally intelligible with both reaching L1-dominant control levels. At –8 dB SNR, SDB English intelligibility matched that of L1-dominant English controls, yet SDB Spanish intelligibility was significantly lower than that of L1-dominant Spanish controls. These results emphasize that extended (but not early) exposure is both necessary and sufficient for robust speech learning.

Contribution of Nonverbal Cognitive Skills on Bilingual Children’s Grammatical Performance: Influence of Exposure, Task Type, and Language of Assessment

This study explores the contribution of nonverbal working memory and processing speed on bilingual children’s morphosyntactic knowledge, after controlling for language exposure. Participants include 307 Spanish–English bilinguals in Kindergarten, second, and fourth grade (mean age = 7;8, SD = 18 months). Morphosyntactic knowledge in English and Spanish was measured using two separate language tasks: a cloze task and a narrative language task. In a series of four hierarchical linear regressions predicting cloze and narrative performance in English and Spanish, we evaluate the proportion of variance explained after adding (a) English exposure, (b) processing speed and working memory, and (c) interaction terms to the model. The results reveal the differential contribution of nonverbal cognitive skills across English and Spanish. Cognition was not significantly related to performance on either grammatical cloze or narrative tasks in Spanish. Narrative tasks in English were significantly predicted by processing speed, after controlling for age and exposure. Grammatical cloze tasks in English posed an additional cognitive demand on working memory. The findings suggest that cognitive demands vary for bilinguals based on the language of assessment and the task.

Adjectives in Heritage Spanish

Ordering of predicative adjectives within the Noun Phrase varies cross linguistically in systematic ways (Cinque 2010). In Spanish adjectival ordering exhibits more flexibility than in English. To test the extent to which the stricter word order in English affects Spanish adjectival ordering, 35 heritage bilingual Spanish speakers living in an English dominant environment were asked to judge adjectival word orders and interpret adjective elisions. Results indicate acceptance of adjectival ordering involving roll up movement (Cinque 2010), not possible in English. They also show the ability to interpret elisions in contexts involving the same type of movement. These results provide evidence for the availability of flexible ordering in Spanish even among Spanish-English bilinguals.

The foreign language effect in bilingualism: Examining prosocial sentiment after offense taking

AbstractThis study examines whether theforeign language effectmitigates reactions to value-inconsistent sociopolitical content. We examined 69 English–Spanish bilinguals and 31 Spanish–English heritage bilinguals, half of whom did the experiment in their native language and half in their second language. Participants were administered a survey in which trial emotiveness was manipulated by using the quantifiers some and all (e.g.,Some Trump supporters are racistsvs.All Trump supporters are racists). The some-types (n= 30) served as a baseline for the all-types (n= 30). After each target, participants rated their willingness to be prosocial (e.g., holding the door for a stranger) on a scale of 1–7, 1 beingtotally agreeand 7 beingtotally disagree. Our results suggest that processing emotional information in a second language is less emotional than in a first language and that such a decrease in emotionality results in the neutralization of offense taken. However, individual differences in linguistic profiles across participants, as well as contextual framing, lead to discrete value judgments. Proficiency, learner type, political affiliation, and context type affect willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. As a group, the bilinguals showed no decrease in their willingness to engage in such behaviors, regardless of context type; speakers of higher proficiency and stronger political values increase prosocial sentiment; and lower proficiency and weaker views lead to neutral prosocial sentiment.

Overlapping and distinct neural networks supporting novel word learning in bilinguals and monolinguals

AbstractThis study investigated how bilingual experience alters neural mechanisms supporting novel word learning. We hypothesised that novel words elicit increased semantic activation in the larger bilingual lexicon, potentially stimulating stronger memory integration than in monolinguals. English monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals were trained on two sets of written Swahili–English word pairs, one set on each of two consecutive days, and performed a recognition task in the MRI-scanner. Lexical integration was measured through visual primed lexical decision. Surprisingly, no group difference emerged in explicit word memory, and priming occurred only in the monolingual group. This difference in lexical integration may indicate an increased need for slow neocortical interleaving of old and new information in the denser bilingual lexicon. The fMRI data were consistent with increased use of cognitive control networks in monolinguals and of articulatory motor processes in bilinguals, providing further evidence for experience-induced neural changes: monolinguals and bilinguals reached largely comparable behavioural performance levels in novel word learning, but did so by recruiting partially overlapping but non-identical neural systems to acquire novel words.

First-language influence on second language speech perception depends on task demands.

While listening to non-native speech, second language users filter the auditory input through their native language. We examined how bilinguals perceived second language (L2 English) sound sequences that conflicted with native-language (L1 Spanish) constraints across three experiments with different task demands. We used the L1 Spanish phonotactic constraint (i.e., rule for combining speech sounds) that vowels must precede s+consonant clusters (e.g., Spanish: estricto, "strict"). This L1 Spanish constraint may influence Spanish-English bilinguals' processing of L2 English words such as strict because of a missing initial vowel, as in estrict. We found that the extent to which bilinguals were influenced by the L1 during L2 processing depended on task demands. When metalinguistic awareness demands were low, as in the AX word discrimination task (Experiment 1), cross-linguistic effects were not observed. When metalinguistic awareness demands were high, as in the vowel detection (Experiment 2) and lexical decision (Experiment 3) tasks, response times demonstrated that bilinguals were influenced by the L1 constraint when processing L2 words beginning with an s+consonant. We conclude that bilinguals are cross-linguistically influenced by L1 phonotactic constraints during L2 processing when metalinguistic demands are higher, suggesting that L2 input may be mapped onto L1 sub-lexical representations during perception. These results extend previous research on language co-activation and speech perception by providing a more fine-grained understanding of task demands and elucidating when and where cross-linguistic phonotactic access is present during bilingual comprehension.

Interlingual Interactions Elicit Performance Mismatches Not “Compromise” Categories in Early Bilinguals: Evidence from Meta-Analysis and Coronal Stops

Previous studies attest that some early bilinguals produce the sounds of their languages in a manner that is characterized as “compromise” with regard to monolingual speakers. The present study uses meta-analytic techniques and coronal stop data from early bilinguals in order to assess this claim. The goal was to evaluate the cumulative evidence for “compromise” voice-onset time (VOT) in the speech of early bilinguals by providing a comprehensive assessment of the literature and presenting an acoustic analysis of coronal stops from early Spanish–English bilinguals. The studies were coded for linguistic and methodological features, as well as effect sizes, and then analyzed using a cross-classified Bayesian meta-analysis. The pooled effect for “compromise” VOT was negligible (β = −0.13). The acoustic analysis of the coronal stop data showed that the early Spanish–English bilinguals often produced Spanish and English targets with mismatched features from their other language. These performance mismatches presumably occurred as a result of interlingual interactions elicited by the experimental task. Taken together, the results suggest that early bilinguals do not have “compromise” VOT, though their speech involves dynamic phonetic interactions that can surface as performance mismatches during speech production.

What Cognates Reveal about Default Language Selection in Bilingual Sentence Production.

When producing connected speech, bilinguals often select a default-language as the primary force driving the utterance. The present study investigated the cognitive mechanisms underlying default language selection. In three experiments, Spanish-English bilinguals named pictures out of context, or read aloud sentences with a single word replaced by a picture with a cognate (e.g., lemon-limón) or noncognate name (e.g., table-mesa). Cognates speeded naming and significantly reduced switching costs. Critically, cognate effects were not modulated by sentence context. However, switch costs were larger in sentence context, which also exhibited significant language dominance effects, asymmetrical switch costs, and asymmetrical cognate facilitation effects, which were absent or symmetrical respectively in bare picture naming. These results suggest that default-language selection is driven primarily by boosting activation of the default language, not by proactive inhibition of the nondefault language. However, relaxation of proactive control in production of connected speech leads to greater reliance on reactive control to produce language switches relative to out-of-context naming, a contextually driven dynamic tradeoff in language control mechanisms.

Do Cross-Language Script Differences Enable Bilinguals to Function Selectively When Speaking in One Language Alone?

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.

Language and culture in bilinguals’ mind: Insights from case studies

The present article deals with a number of themes that pertain to culture and language relation in bilingual reality, most notably how bilingualism is defined and classified in the literature, and how bicultural bilinguals’ languages and cultures are interconnected. In the subsequent research part, the reported data formed the basis for conclusions supported by two-year observation and interviews of 4 Spanish-English bilinguals. The case studies allowed to gather information regarding their linguistic and cultural behaviour and how they identify themselves both linguistically and culturally. Each case study is discussed and conclusions on parallel points along with dissimilarities between accounts of the linguistic and cultural reality experienced in both languages are outlined.

Motor-type aphasia in English and Spanish and its relation to the linguistic variables intervening in reading

Abstract This pilot study was designed to explore the way linguistic variables affect reading in English and Spanish in the context of motor-type aphasia. The participants were two speakers with English L1, two English-Spanish bilinguals, and four speakers with Spanish L1. The Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE) and Psycholinguistic Assessments of Language Processing in Aphasia (PALPA) were used to assess the participants’ reading skills. L1 English, Spanish, and bilingual participants used both the lexical and sublexical route when reading, but utilized one route more than the other depending on their linguistic profile. L1 Spanish participants used the damaged phonological route, producing many neologisms or non-answers. L1 English participants, utilizing the lexical route, produced more lexicalizations than neologisms. The bilingual participants showed interlanguage interference by producing many spelling-sound regularizations. These results suggest that orthographic depth and different linguistic variables affect individuals with motor-type aphasia depending on the language they speak.

Establishing Diagnostic Skills in Novice Bilingual Clinicians: A Scaffolded Approach

This study sought to scaffold administration performance of a standardized bilingual screener to sufficient levels of accuracy for data collection using principles of Cognitive Load Theory by managing task complexity when training pre-service clinicians. Before training administration skills, two students were given copies of the manual for the Bilingual English Spanish Oral Screener (BESOS) and asked to administer the protocol independently. During the intervention phase, students were scaffolded through administration tasks of increasing complexity and given explicit instruction, which included tailored goals, modeling and feedback. Performance for four skills was assessed using a fidelity rubric and analyzed using visual analysis. Performance varied per skill but overall scores were higher during the intervention phases than during the baseline phase for both students. In addition, accuracy of performance maintained across client participants showing patterns of generalization. Although the data are limited, scaffolding training skills for pre-service clinicians appears supportive in training administration skills for bilingual tasks. The level of support may vary per skill and per language. Future research may seek to investigate other clinical skills and tasks.