scholarly journals Neural Evidence of Language Membership Control in Bilingual Word Recognition: An fMRI Study of Cognate Processing in Chinese–Japanese Bilinguals

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ming-Che Hsieh ◽  
Hyeonjeong Jeong ◽  
Motoaki Sugiura ◽  
Ryuta Kawashima
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Response Competition ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Identification System ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Decision System ◽  
Language Membership

This study aims to examine the neural mechanisms of resolving response competition during bilingual word recognition in the context of language intermixing. During fMRI scanning, Chinese–Japanese unbalanced bilinguals were required to perform a second-language (L2) lexical decision task composed of cognates, interlingual homographs, matched control words from both Chinese (first language) and Japanese (L2), and pseudowords. Cognate word processing showed longer reaction times and greater activation in the supplementary motor area (SMA) than L2 control word processing. In light of the orthographic and semantic overlap of cognates, these results reflect the cognitive processing involved in resolving response conflicts enhanced by the language membership of non-target language during bilingual word recognition. A significant effect of L2 proficiency was also observed only in the SMA, which is associated with the task decision system. This finding supports the bottom-up process in the BIA+ model and the Multilink model. The task/decision system receives the information from the word identification system, making appropriate responses during bilingual word recognition.

Cross-lingual phonological effects in different-script bilingual visual-word recognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 653-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orna Peleg ◽  
Tamar Degani ◽  
Muna Raziq ◽  
Nur Taha
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Identification System ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Cross Lingual ◽  
Spoken Arabic ◽  
Literary Arabic

To isolate cross-lingual phonological effects during visual-word recognition, Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals who are native speakers of Spoken Arabic (SA) and proficient readers of both Literary Arabic (LA) and Hebrew, were asked to perform a visual lexical-decision task (LDT) in either LA (Experiment 1) or Hebrew (Experiments 2 and 3). The critical stimuli were non-words in the target language that either sounded like real words in the non-target language (pseudo-homophones) or did not sound like real words. In Experiment 1, phonological effects were obtained from SA to LA (two forms of the same language), but not from Hebrew to LA (two different languages that do not share the same script). However, cross-lingual phonological effects were obtained when participants performed the LDT in their second language, Hebrew (Experiments 2 and 3). Interestingly, while the within-language effect (from SA to LA) was inhibitory, the between-language effect (from SA to Hebrew) was facilitatory. These findings are explained within the Bilingual Interactive Activation plus (BIA+) model which postulates a fully interconnected identification system that provides output to a task/decision system.

scholarly journals The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ton Dijkstra ◽  
Walter J.B. van Heuven
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Identification System ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Decision System ◽  
Stimulus List ◽  
New Model ◽  
Lexical Representations

The paper opens with an evaluation of the BIA model of bilingual word recognition in the light of recent empirical evidence. After pointing out problems and omissions, a new model, called the BIA+, is proposed. Structurally, this new model extends the old one by adding phonological and semantic lexical representations to the available orthographic ones, and assigns a different role to the so-called language nodes. Furthermore, it makes a distinction between the effects of non-linguistic context (such as instruction and stimulus list composition) and linguistic context (such as the semantic and syntactic effects of sentence context), based on a distinction between the word identification system itself and a task/decision system that regulates control. At the end of the paper, the generalizability of the BIA+ model to different tasks and modalities is discussed.

Bilingual word recognition beyond orthography: On meaning, linguistic context and individual differences

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet G. van Hell
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Context Effects ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Identification System ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Decision System ◽  
Language Competition

Central questions in psycholinguistic studies on bilingualism are how bilinguals access words in their two languages, and how they control their language systems and solve the problem of cross-language competition. In their excellent paper “The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision”, Dijkstra and Van Heuven expound their BIA+ model on bilingual word recognition. BIA+ builds on its predecessor BIA, one of the first connectionist models on bilingual word recognition. BIA+ preserves one of BIA's crucial assumptions, namely that the bilingual lexicon is integrated across languages and is accessed in a language non-selective way, an assumption that is supported in many empirical studies and that is now widely accepted in the bilingual literature. Compared to the original BIA model, the BIA+ architecture is further developed (in fact, much more so than the subtle ‘plus’ denotes). BIA+ now includes orthographic, as well as phonological and semantic representations in the word identification system, and a distinction is made between a word identification system and a task/decision system. This latter extension resembles the language task schemas in Green's (1998) Inhibitory Control model. Dijkstra and Van Heuven also distinguish between effects of linguistic and non-linguistic context on performance: linguistic context effects, that arise from lexical, syntactic and semantic sources, are assumed to affect the activity in the word identification system, whereas non-linguistic effects, that can arise from instruction, task demands or participant expectancies, are assumed to affect the task/decision system.

Spoken word processing in bilingual older adults

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Titone ◽  
Julie Mercier ◽  
Aruna Sudarshan ◽  
Irina Pivneva ◽  
Jason Gullifer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Language Competition ◽  
Cross Language

Abstract We investigated whether bilingual older adults experience within- and cross-language competition during spoken word recognition similarly to younger adults matched on age of second language (L2) acquisition, objective and subjective L2 proficiency, and current L2 exposure. In a visual world eye-tracking paradigm, older and younger adults, who were French-dominant or English-dominant English-French bilinguals, listened to English words, and looked at pictures including the target (field), a within-language competitor (feet) or cross-language (French) competitor (fille, “girl”), and unrelated filler pictures while their eye movements were monitored. Older adults showed evidence of greater within-language competition as a function of increased target and competitor phonological overlap. There was some evidence of age-related differences in cross-language competition, however, it was quite small overall and varied as a function of target language proficiency. These results suggest that greater within- and possibly cross-language lexical competition during spoken word recognition may underlie some of the communication difficulties encountered by healthy bilingual older adults.

scholarly journals The Omission of Accent Marks Does Not Hinder Word Recognition: Evidence From Spanish

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Marcet ◽  
María Fernández-López ◽  
Melanie Labusch ◽  
Manuel Perea
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Similar Response ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Semantic Categorization ◽  
Blocked Design

Recent research has found that the omission of accent marks in Spanish does not produce slower word identification times in go/no-go lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks [e.g., cárcel (prison) = carcel], thus suggesting that vowels like á and a are represented by the same orthographic units during word recognition and reading. However, there is a discrepant finding with the yes/no lexical decision task, where the words with the omitted accent mark produced longer response times than the words with the accent mark. In Experiment 1, we examined this discrepant finding by running a yes/no lexical decision experiment comparing the effects for words and non-words. Results showed slower response times for the words with omitted accent mark than for those with the accent mark present (e.g., cárcel < carcel). Critically, we found the opposite pattern for non-words: response times were longer for the non-words with accent marks (e.g., cárdil > cardil), thus suggesting a bias toward a “word” response for accented items in the yes/no lexical decision task. To test this interpretation, Experiment 2 used the same stimuli with a blocked design (i.e., accent mark present vs. omitted in all items) and a go/no-go lexical decision task (i.e., respond only to “words”). Results showed similar response times to words regardless of whether the accent mark was omitted (e.g., cárcel = carcel). This pattern strongly suggests that the longer response times to words with an omitted accent mark in yes/no lexical decision experiments are a task-dependent effect rather than a genuine reading cost.

Cross-language effects of phonological and orthographic similarity in cognate word recognition

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haydee Carrasco-Ortiz ◽  
Mark Amengual ◽  
Stefan Th. Gries
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Distance Measure ◽  
Levenshtein Distance ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Orthographic Similarity ◽  
Processing Abilities ◽  
Language Effects ◽  
English Dominant

This study investigated the extent to which phonological and orthographic overlap between the two languages of bilinguals predicts word processing abilities in their dominant and non-dominant languages. Forty-four English-dominant L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers and Spanish-dominant Spanish heritage speakers performed a lexical decision task while reading words in English and Spanish. We calculated orthographic and phonological similarity of cognate and noncognate words using the Levenshtein distance measure. Results showed that both bilingual groups benefited from orthographic similarity when reading Spanish and English words, whereas a facilitative effect was restricted to Spanish words that shared phonology across languages. These findings suggest a different contribution of phonological and orthographic similarity in bilingual word recognition, independently of language dominance.

scholarly journals Taxi vs. Taksi: On Orthographic Word Recognition in the Left Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (10) ◽  
pp. 1584-1594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Kronbichler ◽  
Jürgen Bergmann ◽  
Florian Hutzler ◽  
Wolfgang Staffen ◽  
Alois Mair ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Imaging Study ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Familiarity Effect ◽  
Visual Word Form Area ◽  
Orthographic Representations ◽  
Occipitotemporal Cortex

The importance of the left occipitotemporal cortex for visual word processing is highlighted by numerous functional neuroimaging studies, but the precise function of the visual word form area (VWFA) in this brain region is still under debate. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study varied orthographic familiarity independent from phonological-semantic familiarity by presenting orthographically familiar and orthographically unfamiliar forms (pseudohomophones) of the same words in a phonological lexical decision task. Consistent with orthographic word recognition in the VWFA, we found lower activation for familiar compared with unfamiliar forms, but no difference between pseudohomophones and pseudowords. This orthographic familiarity effect in the VWFA differed from the phonological familiarity effect in left frontal regions, where phonologically unfamiliar pseudowords led to higher activation than phonologically familiar pseudohomophones. We suggest that the VWFA not only computes letter string representations but also hosts word-specific orthographic representations. These representations function as recognition units with the effect that letter strings that readily match with stored representations lead to less activation than letter strings that do not.

Early Visual Word Processing Is Flexible: Evidence from Spatiotemporal Brain Dynamics

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (9) ◽  
pp. 1738-1751 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuanyuan Chen ◽  
Matthew H. Davis ◽  
Friedemann Pulvermüller ◽  
Olaf Hauk
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Dependent Manner ◽  
Task Effects ◽  
Occipitotemporal Cortex ◽  
Visual Word Processing ◽  
Independent Effects

Visual word recognition is often described as automatic, but the functional locus of top–down effects is still a matter of debate. Do task demands modulate how information is retrieved, or only how it is used? We used EEG/MEG recordings to assess whether, when, and how task contexts modify early retrieval of specific psycholinguistic information in occipitotemporal cortex, an area likely to contribute to early stages of visual word processing. Using a parametric approach, we analyzed the spatiotemporal response patterns of occipitotemporal cortex for orthographic, lexical, and semantic variables in three psycholinguistic tasks: silent reading, lexical decision, and semantic decision. Task modulation of word frequency and imageability effects occurred simultaneously in ventral occipitotemporal regions—in the vicinity of the putative visual word form area—around 160 msec, following task effects on orthographic typicality around 100 msec. Frequency and typicality also produced task-independent effects in anterior temporal lobe regions after 200 msec. The early task modulation for several specific psycholinguistic variables indicates that occipitotemporal areas integrate perceptual input with prior knowledge in a task-dependent manner. Still, later task-independent effects in anterior temporal lobes suggest that word recognition eventually leads to retrieval of semantic information irrespective of task demands. We conclude that even a highly overlearned visual task like word recognition should be described as flexible rather than automatic.

scholarly journals T-value and mutual information as measures of the association strength in Serbian language

Psihologija ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Lisac ◽  
Petar Milin
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
Mutual Information ◽  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Association Strength ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
Response Latencies

Since the study of Meyer and Schvaneveldt (1971), a large number of researches have shown facilitation effect in cognitive processing of a given word when it is preceded by a semantically (i.e. associatively) related word. In this study, we examined influence of association strength between context and target on visual word processing in Serbian language. Primary goal was to test cognitive relevance of the t-value and mutual information (MI) as measures of the association strength. The results showed that the mutual information affects response latencies in the visual lexical decision task: the higher the mutual information for two words (bigram), the shorter the reaction time. Contrariwise, cognitive relevance of the t-value as a measure of the words' association strength was not confirmed.

Words only go so far: Linguistic context affects bilingual word processing

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (04) ◽  
pp. 689-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
JANET G. VAN HELL
Keyword(s):  
Computational Model ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Model Development ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Identification System ◽  
Simulation Studies ◽  
Linguistic Context ◽  
Syntactic Information

In their keynote paper, Dijkstra, Wahl, Buytenhuijs, van Halem, Al-jibouri, de Korte, and Rekké (2018) present a computational model of bilingual word recognition and translation, Multilink, that integrates and further refines the architecture and processing principles of two influential models of bilingual word processing: the Bilingual Activation Model (BIA/BIA+) and the Revised Hierarchical model (RHM). Unlike the earlier models, Multilink has been implemented as a computational model so its design principles and assumptions can be compared with human processing data in simulation studies – which is an important step forward in model development and refinement. But Multilink also leaves behind an important theoretical advancement that was touched upon in extending BIA to BIA+ (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002): how linguistic context influences word processing. In their presentation of BIA+, Dijkstra and Van Heuven (2002) hypothesized that syntactic and semantic aspects of sentence context may affect the word identification system. Theoretically, this was an important step forward, as none of the bilingual word processing models (and few monolingual word processing models, for that matter) had incorporated linguistic context, and at that time only a handful of empirical studies had examined how linguistic context affects bilingual word processing. However, in the past 15 years a significant body of empirical work has been published that examines how semantic and syntactic information in sentences impacts word processing in bilinguals. These important insights are not incorporated in the Multilink model.

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