scholarly journals Cross-linguistic activation in bilingual sentence processing: The role of word class meaning

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
KRISTOF BATEN ◽  
FABRICE HOFMAN ◽  
TOM LOEYS

This study investigates how categorial (word class) semantics influences cross-linguistic interactions when reading in L2. Previous homograph studies paid little attention to the possible influence of different word classes in the stimulus material on cross-linguistic activation. The present study examines the word recognition performance of Dutch–English bilinguals who performed a lexical decision task to word targets appearing in a sentence. To determine the influence of word class meaning, the critical words either showed a word class overlap (e.g. the homograph tree [noun], which means “step” in Dutch) or not (e.g. big [adj], which is a noun in Dutch meaning “piglet”). In the condition of word class overlap, a facilitation effect was observed, suggesting that both languages were active. When there was no word class overlap, the facilitation effect disappeared. This result suggests that categorial meaning affects the word recognition process of bilinguals.

1981 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Tweedy ◽  
Robert H. Lapinski

An appropriate semantic context has been demonstrated to facilitate word recognition in a variety of paradigms. The present experiment examined the consequences of varying the probability that word pairs presented in a lexical decision task would be related in meaning. Early in the 20-min session, the recent density of semantic relationships between words had little influence on the size of the contextual facilitation effect, but later the influence was marked. The results suggest that the processing facilitation provided by an appropriate semantic context consisted of both a relatively automatic component and a labile strategic component with an influence that was modulated by the recent usefulness of the information provided by semantic context.


2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara J. Unsworth ◽  
Penny M. Pexman

There has been much debate about the role of phonology in reading. This debate has been fuelled, in part, by mixed findings for phonological effects in lexical decision tasks. In the present research we investigated the impact of reader skill on three phonological effects (homophone, homograph, and regularity effects) in a lexical decision task and in a phonological lexical decision task. In both tasks, the more skilled readers showed different patterns of phonological effects from those of the less skilled readers; in particular, less skilled readers showed regularity effects in both tasks whereas more skilled readers did not. We concluded that more skilled readers activate phonology in these tasks but do so more efficiently, with less spurious phonological activation.


2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHARI R. BAUM

Lexical stress patterns appear to be important in word recognition processes in normal individuals. The present investigation employed a lexical decision task to assess whether left (LHD) and right hemisphere damaged (RHD) patients are similarly sensitive to stress patterns in lexical access. The results confirmed that individuals without brain damage are influenced by stress patterns, as indicated by increased lexical decision latencies to incorrectly stressed word and nonword stimuli. The data for the LHD patients revealed an effect of stress for real word targets only, whereas the reaction time data for the RHD patients as a group showed no significant influence of stress pattern. However, there was a great deal of individual variability in performance. The latency and error rate findings suggest that LHD patients and non-brain-damaged individuals are both sensitive to lexical stress in word recognition, but the LHD patients are more likely to treat incorrectly stressed items as nonwords. The results are discussed in relation to theories of the hemispheric lateralization of prosodic processing and the role of lexical stress in word recognition.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (6) ◽  
pp. 1221-1238 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRE NIKOLAEV ◽  
MINNA LEHTONEN ◽  
EVE HIGBY ◽  
JUNGMOON HYUN ◽  
SAMEER ASHAIE

ABSTRACTThe aim of the present study was to investigate whether the recognition speed of Finnish nominal base forms varies as a function of their paradigmatic complexity (stem allomorphy) or productivity status. Nikolaev et al. (2014) showed that words with greater stem allomorphy from an unproductive inflectional class are recognized faster than words with lower stem allomorphy from a productive inflectional class. Productivity of an inflectional paradigm correlates with the number of stem allomorphs in languages like Finnish in that unproductive inflectional classes tend to have higher stem allomorphy. We wanted to distinguish which of these two characteristics provides the benefit to speed of recognition found by Nikolaev et al. (2014). The current study involved a lexical decision task comparing three categories of words: unproductive with three or more stem allomorphs, unproductive with two stem allomorphs, and productive with two stem allomorphs. We observed a facilitation effect for word recognition only for unproductive words with three or more stem allomorphs, but not for unproductive words with two allomorphs. This effect was observed particularly in words of low to moderate familiarity. The findings suggest that high stem allomorphy, rather than productivity of the inflectional class, is driving the facilitation effect in word recognition.


1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-744 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna M. T. Bosman ◽  
Annette de Groot

Three tasks were employed to investigate the role of assembled phonology in beginning readers. In two proofreading tasks, children had more trouble finding pseudohomophone misspellings (stimuli with phonology identical to that of a word) than control misspellings (stimuli that do not share their phonology with a word). In a lexical-decision task, they had more trouble deciding that pseudohomophone misspellings were non-words than deciding that control misspellings were non-words. Finally, in a semantic-categorization task, children had more trouble rejecting pseudohomophone misspellings as a member of a designated category than rejecting control misspellings. Differences between more and less advanced readers occurred, but they need not be attributed to differential use of phonology in word recognition. Instead, they were explained in terms of a difference between reader groups in spelling-verification efficiency. The results of the present studies on beginning reading parallel studies on skilled reading by Van Orden et al. (1992). The main conclusion was that assembled phonology plays an important role in word recognition in beginning readers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110060
Author(s):  
Lucia Colombo ◽  
Simone Sulpizio

In the present study stress diacritics were used to investigate the processing of stress information in lexical decision. We ran two experiments in Italian, a language in which stress position is not predictable by rule and only final stress – i.e., the less common pattern – is orthographically marked with a diacritic. In Experiment 1, a lexical decision task, two factors were manipulated: The stress pattern of words – antepenultimate (non dominant) and penultimate (dominant) – and the presence/absence of the diacritics, signalling the stress position. Participants were faster to categorize stimuli as words when they bear dominant than non dominant stress. However, the advantage disappeared when the diacritic was used. In Experiment 2, a same-different verification task was used in which participants had to decide if a referent word and a target were same (carota-CAROTA, /ka'rɔta/; tavolo-TAVOLO, /'tavolo/) or different. We compared two conditions requiring a "different" response, in which referent and target with dominant and non dominant stress were congruent (caròta-CAROTA; tàvolo-TAVOLO) or incongruent (càrota-CAROTA; tavòlo-TAVOLO) with the word’s stress. For words with dominant stress, “different” responses were faster in the incongruent condition than the congruent condition. This congruency effect was not observed for words with non-dominant stress pattern. Overall, the data suggest that stress information is based on lexical phonology, and the stress dominance effect has a lexical base in word recognition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Izura ◽  
Natividad Hernández-Muñoz

AbstractThis study examines the factors affecting word recognition in a language with a consistent system to map letters into sounds; Spanish. The influence of semantics on the recognition of words in languages with inconsistent mappings, such as English, is well documented. Not much is known for other languages. A lexical decision task and two category verification tasks with varying levels of semantic complexity were used. In contrast to English, none of the semantic variables entered into the analyses had a significant impact on lexical decision latencies or errors. Imageability showed an influence on responses to both category verification tasks while the effect of connectivity was marginally significant in the category verification task with the greatest semantic complexity. Results indicate that word recognition decisions can be made without the involvement of central components of the semantic system. The role of semantics in word recognition in languages with consistent spelling systems will be discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIRA GOR

Research on nonnative auditory word recognition makes use of a lexical decision task with phonological priming to explore the role of phonological form in nonnative lexical access. In a medium-lag lexical decision task with phonological priming, nonnative speakers treat minimal pairs of words differentiated by a difficult phonological contrast as a repetition of the same word. While native speakers show facilitation in medium-lag priming only for identical word pairs, nonnative speakers also show facilitation for minimal pairs. In short-lag phonological priming, when the prime and the target have phonologically overlapping onsets, nonnative speakers show facilitation, while native speakers show inhibition. This review discusses two possible reasons for facilitation in nonnative phonological priming: reduced sensitivity to nonnative phonological contrasts, and reduced lexical competition of nonnative words with underdifferentiated, or fuzzy phonolexical representations. Nonnative words may be processed sublexically, which leads to sublexical facilitation instead of the inhibition resulting from lexical competition.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 441-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanjiao Zhu ◽  
Peggy Pik Ki Mok

Abstract Previous studies on bilingual visual word recognition have been mainly based on European participants, while less is understood about Asian populations. In this study, the recognition of German-English cognates and interlingual homographs in lexical decision tasks was examined in the two non-native languages of Cantonese-English-German trilinguals. In the L2 English task, cognates were reacted to faster and more accurately than their matched non-cognates, while in the equivalent L3 German task, no cognate facilitation effect was found. However, cognate facilitation effects on response time and accuracy were observed in another L3 German task including cognates and interlingual homographs. The study suggests that Asian trilinguals access L2 and L3 in a language non-selective manner, despite their low proficiency in the recently acquired L3. Meanwhile, lexical processing in a non-proficient L3 is to a great extent affected by multiple contextual factors.


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