Interlingual homograph recognition: Effects of task demands and language intermixing

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
TON DIJKSTRA ◽  
HENK VAN JAARSVELD ◽  
SJOERD TEN BRINKE

A series of three lexical decision experiments showed that interlingual homographs may be recognized faster than, slower than, or as fast as monolingual control words depending on task requirements and language intermixing. In Experiment 1, Dutch bilingual participants performed an English lexical decision task including English/Dutch homographs, cognates, and purely English control words. Reaction times to interlingual homographs were unaffected by the frequency of the Dutch reading and did not differ from monolingual controls. In contrast, cognates were recognized faster than controls. In Experiment 2, Dutch participants again performed an English lexical decision task on homographs, but, apart from nonwords, Dutch words were included which required a “no” reaction. Strong inhibition effects were obtained which depended on the relative frequency difference of the two readings of the homograph. These turned into frequency-dependent facilitation effects in Experiment 3, where participants performed a general lexical decision task, responding “yes” if a word of either language was presented. It is argued that bilingual word recognition models can only account for the series of experiments if they explain how lexical processing is affected by task demands and stimulus list composition.

2005 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Annelie Tuinman ◽  
Ton Dijkstra

In two experiments, we investigated how words with cross-linguistic overlap in orthography and/or phonology are recognized by bilinguals. Dutch-English bilinguals performed an English visual lexical decision task including words that are spelled and/or pronounced the same in English and Dutch. Earlier studies by Dijkstra et al (1999) and Lemhöfer & Dijkstra (2004) showed seemingly contradictory results. For example, in the first study, homophones were reacted to significantly more slowly, whereas homophones produced facilitation in the second study. However, the previous studies had problems with the frequency distribution of the stimuli and the control conditions. Therefore, the experimental design was improved in Experiments 1 and 2 in order to find out how interlingual homographs are recognized by bilinguals and what the influence is of orthographic and phonological overlap. Experiment 1, with homographs with only orthographic overlap and homographs with both orthographic and phonological overlap, partly replicated results found by Dijkstra et al. and Lemhöfer & Dijkstra, but did not show the null-effect for homographs with both orthographic and phonological overlap. Because the major difference between the three studies was stimulus list composition, Experiment 2 tested whether a change in stimulus list composition influenced the reaction times to interlingual homographs. Experiment 2 included homographs with both orthographic and phonological overlap and homophones. In this experiment, homophones produced a null-effect and the homographs were reacted to significantly more slowly than control words. The results imply that a change in stimulus list composition influences reaction times to interlingual homographs, because it can induce different types of participant strategies.


2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ton Dijkstra ◽  
Ellen De Bruijn ◽  
Herbert Schriefers ◽  
Sjoerd Ten Brinke

We contrasted the effect of instruction-induced expectancies and language intermixing in an English lexical decision task performed by Dutch–English bilinguals. At the start of the experiment, participants were instructed to respond to interlingual homographs and exclusively English words by giving a “yes” response, and to English non-words and exclusively Dutch words by giving a “no” response. In the first part of the experiment the stimulus list did not contain any Dutch words. In the second part of the experiment, Dutch items were introduced. No significant differences were found between interlingual homographs and controls in the first part of the experiment, while strong inhibition effects were obtained for interlingual homographs in the second part. These results indicate that language intermixing rather than instruction-based expectancies drives the bilingual partipants' performance. Consequences for current views on bilingual word recognition are discussed.


Author(s):  
Kristin Lemhöfer ◽  
Ralph Radach

To investigate the language-specific or language-integrated nature of bilingual lexical processing in different task contexts, we studied how bilinguals process nonwords that differ in their relative resemblance to the bilinguals’ two languages in different versions of the lexical decision task. Unbalanced German-English bilinguals performed a pure-German, a pure-English, and a mixed lexical decision task on the same set of nonwords that were either very English-like or very German-like. Rejection latencies for these two nonword categories were reversed in the pure-English and pure-German conditions: Nonwords that were more similar to the current target language were rejected more slowly. In the mixed task, reaction times were generally slower, and nonwords resembling the participants’ subdominant language (English) were harder to reject. The results suggest that task context substantially alters the criteria for the word/nonword decision in bilinguals.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 185-190
Author(s):  
Filiz Mergen ◽  
Gulmira Kuruoglu

A great bulk of research in the psycholinguistic literature has been dedicated to hemispheric organization of words. An overwhelming evidence suggests that the left hemisphere is primarily responsible for lexical processing. However, non-words, which look similar to real words but lack meaningful associations, is underrepresented in the laterality literature. This study investigated the lateralization of Turkish non-words. Fifty-three Turkish monolinguals performed a lexical decision task in a visual hemifield paradigm. An analysis of their response times revealed left-hemispheric dominance for non-words, adding further support to the literature. The accuracy of their answers, however, were comparable regardless of the field of presentation. The results were discussed in light of the psycholinguistic word processing views.


2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Borkenau ◽  
Nadine Mauer

The trait–congruency hypothesis predicts that persons high in positive or negative trait affect more readily process pleasant or unpleasant stimuli, respectively. In two studies, participants were administered measures of personality and affect. Moreover, a yes/no lexical decision task with pleasant, unpleasant and neutral words was administered in Study 1, whereas a go/no‐go task was used in Study 2. Several methods to increase reliabilities of differences in reaction times are explored. Correlations of measures of personality and trait affect with decision times were mostly consistent with the trait–congruency hypothesis, particularly for decision times in the go/no‐go task that measured individual differences in valence‐specific decision times more reliably. The findings suggest that trait‐related concept accessibility is one source of trait congruity. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shari R. Baum

ABSTRACTTwo experiments were conducted to explore processing of relative clause structures by normal elderly adults. Four groups of subjects (aged 20–29 years, 60–69 years, 70–79 years, and 80–89 years) participated in a lexical decision task and a sentence repetition task. Results of the lexical decision task revealed longer reaction times and somewhat different patterns of performance for the older subjects as compared to the young subjects; on the repetition task, the oldest subjects performed more poorly overall. Findings are suggestive of a reduction in computational capacity in the elderly subjects, which may account for observed decrements in syntactic processing as compared to young adults.


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Wittenberg ◽  
Maria Mercedes Piñango

Henry gave Elsa a kiss give kiss give a kiss We test two approaches to light verb constructions: (1) joint predication in light verb constructions is stored as pre-specified, and their high frequency predicts less processing cost. (2) Joint predication in light verb constructions is built in real-time. The entailed extra-syntactic composition predicts greater cost. Results from a cross-modal lexical decision task show delayed, higher reaction times for light verb constructions, supporting (2), which is consistent with a linguistic architecture that has partly autonomous lexico-semantic storage and processing.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tilo Strobach ◽  
Ute Schönpflug

The connectionist model is a prevailing model of the structure and functioning of the cognitive system of the processing of morphology. According to this model, the morphology of regularly and irregularly inflected words (e.g., verb participles and noun plurals) is processed in the same cognitive network. A validation of the connectionist model of the processing of morphology in German as L2 has yet to be achieved. To investigate L2-specific aspects, we compared a group of L1 speakers of German with speakers of German as L2. L2 and L1 speakers of German were assigned to their respective group by their reaction times in picture naming prior to the central task. The reaction times in the lexical decision task of verb participles and noun plurals were largely consistent with the assumption of the connectionist model. Interestingly, speakers of German as L2 showed a specific advantage for irregular compared with regular verb participles.


2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Lockwood ◽  
Abigail Millings ◽  
Erica Hepper ◽  
Angela C. Rowe

Crying is a powerful solicitation of caregiving, yet little is known about the cognitive processes underpinning caring responses to crying others. This study examined (1) whether crying (compared to sad and happy) faces differentially elicited semantic activation of caregiving, and (2) whether individual differences in cognitive and emotional empathy moderated this activation. Ninety participants completed a lexical decision task in which caregiving, neutral, and nonwords were presented after subliminal exposure (24 ms) to crying, sad, and happy faces. Individuals low in cognitive empathy had slower reaction times to caregiving (vs. neutral) words after exposure to crying faces, but not after sad or happy faces. Results are discussed with respect to the role of empathy in response to crying others.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Azevedo ◽  
Ruth Ann Atchley ◽  
Eva Kehayia

The current research utilizes lexical decision within an oddball ERP paradigm to study early lexical processing. Nineteen undergraduate students completed four blocks of the oddball lexical decision task (Nonword targets among Words, Word targets among Nonwords, Word targets among Pseudowords, and Pseudoword targets among Words). We observed a reliable P3 ERP component in conditions where the distinction between rare and frequent trials could be made solely based on lexical status (Words among Nonwords and Nonwords among Words). We saw a reliable P3 to rare words among frequent pseudowords, but no P3 was observed when participants were asked to detect pseudowords in the context of frequent word stimuli. We argue that this observed modulation of the P3 results is consistent with psycholinguistic literature that suggests that two criteria are available during lexical access when performing a lexicality judgement, a non-lexical criterion that relies on global activation at the word level and a lexical criterion that relies on activation of a lexical representation (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001; Grainger & Jacobs, 1996).


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