Tip-of-the-tongue states in Hebrew–English bilinguals

2001 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar H. Gollan ◽  
Nina B. Silverberg

Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) in proficient Hebrew–English bilinguals were compared to those of age-matched monolinguals. Monolinguals retrieved words in English, and bilinguals retrieved words from both languages. Results showed an increased TOT rate in bilinguals. However, bilinguals demonstrated comparable rates of spontaneous resolution, and similar ability to access partial information about target words. Interestingly, bilinguals named the same number of targets as monolinguals when naming an item in either language was counted as a correct response. Besides bilingualism, other factors that predicted TOT rate included word frequency (only for bilinguals), and age (younger participants had more TOTs). Unexpectedly, TOTs for Hebrew targets were not characterized by increased access to grammatical gender and number of syllables relative to control states, thus contrasting notably with TOTs for Italian and English targets respectively. We discuss these results in terms of their relevance for constraining models of bilingual lexical access and models of TOT.

1982 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 615-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Segui ◽  
Jacques Mehler ◽  
Uli Frauenfelder ◽  
John Morton

1996 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arlene J. Astell ◽  
Trevor A. Harley

1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy W. Streim ◽  
Robin S. Chapman

ABSTRACTThis study asked whether lexical availability affects the length, complexity, order of mention, and fluency of children's utterances. Lexical availability was manipulated through discourse support (present or absent) and word frequency (high or low) for 40 target nouns. Length was indexed by mean number of words per communication unit. Complexity was indexed by mean number of verbs per communication unit. Earlier mention was measured by mean number of words preceding the target word in each communication unit. Thirty-six subjects, aged 4, 6, and 8, described 40 illustrations containing a high or low frequency target noun referent. In the discourse support condition, provided for one half of the target words, subjects named the target word prior to the description task. Results showed that the number of responses containing the target word varied with age, word frequency and discourse support condition; length of responses varied with age and its interaction with discourse support; earlier mention varied with age and discourse support condition; and fluency varied with discourse support condition. The results are discussed from the viewpoint of Bock's process model of sentence production.


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 739-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
HEATHER WINSKEL

ABSTRACTFour eye movement experiments investigated whether readers use parafoveal input to gain information about the phonological or orthographic forms of consonants, vowels, and tones in word recognition when reading Thai silently. Target words were presented in sentences preceded by parafoveal previews in which consonant, vowel, or tone information was manipulated. Previews of homophonous consonants (Experiment 1) and concordant vowels (Experiment 2) did not substantially facilitate processing of the target word, whereas the identical previews did. Hence, orthography appears to be playing the prominent role in early word recognition for consonants and vowels. Incorrect tone marker previews (Experiment 3) substantially retarded the subsequent processing of the target word, indicating that lexical tone plays an important role in early word recognition. Vowels in VOP (Experiment 4) did not facilitate processing, which points to vowel position being a significant factor. Primarily, orthographic codes of consonants and vowels (HOP) in conjunction with tone information are assembled from parafoveal input and used for early lexical access.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 999-1010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernando Cuetos ◽  
Bernardo Alvarez ◽  
María González-Nosti ◽  
Alain Méot ◽  
Patrick Bonin

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria De Martino ◽  
Giulia Bracco ◽  
Francesca Postiglione ◽  
Alessandro Laudanna

Abstract In some languages the grammatical gender of nouns can be probabilistically detected using formal cues; for instance, in Italian, the majority of feminine nouns end in ‘-a’(e.g., casa, ‘home’) and the majority of masculine nouns end in ‘-o’ (e.g., albero, ‘tree’). It has been hypothesized that the match/mismatch between the formal information of the suffix and the abstract grammatical information on gender affects lexical processing of nouns. An alternative account is that a default option available for gender poses constraints to mechanisms of lexical access for words exhibiting gender markers in the surface form. In the present study, nouns with highly predictive gender suffix (regular), nouns whose gender cannot be recovered from surface form (opaque) and nouns with misleading gender suffix (irregular) were compared in two reading aloud and two lexical decision experiments. Results confirmed that regular nouns are processed better than irregular nouns. No difference was detected between masculine and feminine opaque nouns. The results allow the conclusion that a formal gender feature (the gender orthographic regularity) is more likely to affect lexical processing of bare nouns than the activation of a gender default option.


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