On obtaining episodic priming in a lexical decision task following paired-associate learning.

In four experiments, subjects made lexical (word-nonword) decisions to target letter strings after studying paired associates. In this lexical decision test, word targets previously studied as response terms in the paired associates were preceded at a 150-ms and/or 950-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) by one of various subsets of the following six types of primes: (a) a neutral ({xxx} or {ready}) prime, (b) a semantically unrelated word prime episodically related to the target through its having been previously studied in the same pair, (c) a semantically related word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, (d) a semantically unrelated word prime previously studied in a pair with some other unrelated word, (e) a nonstudied semantically related word prime, and (f) a nonstudied semantically unrelated word prime. At the 950-ms SOA, facilitation of lexical decisions produced by the episodically related primes was greater in test lists in which there were (a) no 150-ms SOA trials intermixed, (b) no previously studied semantically related primes, and (c) no studied nonword targets. At the 150-ms SOA, facilitation from episodic priming was greater in test lists in which there were (a) no semantically related primes and (b) all studied word targets and no studied nonword targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attention and facilitation: Converging information versus inadvertent reading in Stroop task performance.

Disagreement exists about whether color–word Stroop facilitation is caused by converging information (e.g., Cohen et al., 1990; Roelofs, 2003) or inadvertent reading (MacLeod & MacDonald, 2000). Four experiments tested between these hypotheses by examining Stroop effects on response time (RT) both within and between languages. Words cannot be read aloud to produce facilitation between languages. Dutch–English bilingual participants named color patches while trying to ignore Dutch or English color words presented at a wide range of preexposure and postexposure stimulus onset asynchronies. The color patches were named in Dutch (Experiments 1 and 2) or English (Experiments 3 and 4). In all experiments, Stroop facilitation and interference effects were obtained in mean RTs with similar time courses within and between languages. Facilitation was generally present throughout the entire RT distributions. These results suggest that Stroop interference and facilitation have a common locus within and between languages, supporting the converging information hypothesis of Stroop facilitation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The activation of phonological representations by bilinguals while reading silently: Evidence from interlingual homophones.

These experiments investigated whether bilinguals activate phonological representations from both of their languages when reading silently in one. The critical stimuli were interlingual homophones (e.g., sank in English and cinq in French). French-English and English-French bilinguals completed an English lexical decision task. Decisions made by French-English bilinguals were significantly faster and more accurate for interlingual homophones than for matched English control words. In subsequent experiments, the homophone facilitation effect in the latency data disappeared when distractors were changed to pseudohomophones, when cognates and interlingual homographs were added to the experiment, and when the proportion of critical stimuli was decreased. However, the homophone effect in the error data remained. In contrast, English-French bilinguals revealed little evidence of an interlingual homophone effect. Several attempts were made to increase the saliency of the nontarget language, however these manipulations produced only a small effect in the error data. These results indicate that the activation of phonological representations can appear to be both language-specific and nonspecific depending on the proficiency of the bilinguals and whether they are reading in their weaker or stronger language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive benefits and costs of bilingualism in elementary school students: The case of mathematical word problems.

Previous research has emphasized the importance of language for learning mathematics. This is especially true when mathematical problems have to be extracted from a meaningful context, as in arithmetic word problems. Bilingual learners with a low command of the instructional language thus may face challenges when dealing with mathematical concepts. At the same time, speaking two languages can be associated with cognitive benefits with regard to attentional control processes, although such benefits have only been found in highly proficient bilinguals. In the present study, we attempted to disentangle the effects of bilingual proficiency on mathematical problem solving in Turkish–German bilingual elementary school students. We examined whether the positive cognitive effects of bilingualism could be found not only in highly proficient bilinguals but also in students with an immigrant background and a low command of the instructional or native language. Our findings emphasize the importance of language proficiency for mathematics problem solving, as shown by the predictive value of students' proficiency in the language of testing (German/Turkish) for their performance on mathematical word problems. No additional effect of the language of instruction (German) was found for problem solving in the bilingual students' native language (Turkish). Furthermore, bilinguals gained scores comparable to those of their monolingual peers on word problems that required attentional control skills although performing significantly below their monolingual classmates on ordinary word problems, suggesting that bilinguals have an advantage when it comes to attentional control. Finally, bilingual students with a relatively high command of the instructional language performed better on word problems presented in German than on those presented in Turkish, thus facing cognitive costs when transferring knowledge from one language to the other. Implications of our findings for bilingual education are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition in bilinguals: Evidence from masked phonological priming.

Bilingual written language representation was investigated with the masked phonological priming paradigm. Pseudohomophonic and control primes of French target words were used to show that Dutch–French bilinguals exhibit the same pattern of phonological and orthographic priming as native French speakers, which suggests that the same processes underlie first- and second-language processing. It was also found that for bilinguals, but not monolinguals, it is possible to prime a target word of the second language with a homophonic stimulus (either word or nonword) of the first language. This interlingual phonological priming effect was of the same size as the intralingual priming effect. Implications for theories of bilingual written language representation and for the interpretation of the masked phonological priming paradigm are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bilingual lexical access in context: Evidence from eye movements during reading.

Current models of bilingualism (e.g., BIA+) posit that lexical access during reading is not language selective. However, much of this research is based on the comprehension of words in isolation. The authors investigated whether nonselective access occurs for words embedded in biased sentence contexts (e.g., A. I. Schwartz & J. F. Kroll, 2006). Eye movements were recorded as French–English bilinguals read English sentences containing cognates (e.g., piano), interlingual homographs (e.g., coin, meaning corner in French), or matched control words. Sentences provided a low or high semantic constraint for target-language meanings. Both early-stage comprehension measures (e.g., first fixation duration, gaze duration, and skipping) and late-stage comprehension measures (e.g., go-past time and total reading time) showed significant cognate facilitation and interlingual homograph interference for low-constraint sentences. For high-constraint sentences, however, only early-stage comprehension measures were consistent with nonselective access. There was no evidence of cognate facilitation or interlingual homograph interference for late-stage comprehension measures. Thus, nonselective bilingual lexical access at early stages of comprehension is rapidly resolved in semantically biased contexts at later stages of comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of graphic, phonological, and semantic activation in Chinese character identification.

In reading, lexical form–form relations may be more reliable then form–meaning relations. Accordingly, phonological forms (activated by graphic forms) become actual constituents, rather than addenda, of word identification. These considerations suggest that access to phonological forms can precede meaning access in single-word reading in many circumstances. The time course of form and meaning activation during Chinese word reading was tested in 2 primed-naming experiments varying prime type and prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). The results showed a sequence of facilitation over SOA: (a) graphic, (b) phonological, (c) semantic. Words with precise meanings produced more rapid semantic priming than words with vague meanings. Graphic prime facilitation at a 43-ms SOA gave way to inhibition at longer SOAs. The onset of graphic inhibition coincided with the onset of phonological facilitation, suggesting a single identification moment. The authors describe an interactive constituency model that accounts for the pattern of data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Determiner selection in romance languages: Evidence from French.

Determiner selection requires the retrieval of the noun's syntactic features (e.g., gender) and sometimes of its phonological features. Miozzo and Caramazza (1999) argued that the selection of determiners in Germanic languages is more straightforward than in Romance languages because it is not dependent on the phonological properties of the following word. In the present study, we used the picture–word interference paradigm to investigate the dependency of the determiner on the noun's features in French. In 3 experiments, we found a gender congruency effect at +200 stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), indicating that participants were slower to produce the name of a picture (determiner + noun) when the picture–word pair was incongruent in gender than when it was congruent. We failed to replicate this effect at 0 SOA, in line with previous studies (Alario & Caramazza, 2002). Our results suggest that the features involved in determiner selection are not language specific but rather are specific to the determiner system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the role of eye movements and saccade preparation in generating auditory inhibition of return.

Examined whether the suggestion that "the eccentricity of signals which are effective in activating inhibition of return is restricted to the eccentricity to which accurate saccades can be made" is consistent with the necessary conditions for the occurrence of location-based auditory inhibition of return in a total of 24 volunteers. In 3 experiments, listeners were required to either localize or identify the 2nd of 2 successive sounds. The 1st sound and the 2nd sound could originate from either the same or different locations, and the interval between the onsets of the 2 sounds (Stimulus Onset Asynchrony, SOA) was varied. Sounds were presented out of visual range at 135 azimuth left or right. In Exp 1, localization responses were made more quickly at 100 ms SOA when the target sounded from the same location as the cue, and at 700 ms SOA when the target and cue sounded from different locations. In Exps 2 and 3, Ss monitored visual information presented directly in front of them at the same time as the auditory cue and target were presented behind them. Results indicate that in both experiments, a transition from facilitation at a brief SOA to inhibition at a longer SOA was observed for the auditory task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time-course analysis of semantic and orthographic context effects in picture naming.

In Experiment 1, the authors used a picture-word task to investigate the time courses of semantic interference, orthographic facilitation, and their interaction. Five stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs), from -200 ms (word first) to 200 ms, in steps of 100 ms were used. The results show that the semantic interference effect was restricted to a small SOA range around zero, that the orthographic facilitation effect almost spanned the whole SOA range used, and finally, that the two effects modified each other. The authors present a connectionist model based on W. R. Glaser and M. O. Glaser's (see record 1989-24812-001) model that is able to simulate the experimental results. In Experiment 2, a prediction of the model was tested and supported. The findings support a word-form retrieval account of context effects in picture naming and are discussed in relation to alternative accounts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition of Interlingual Homophones in Bilingual Auditory Word Recognition.

How do bilinguals recognize interlingual homophones? In a gating study, word identification and language membership decisions by Dutch-English bilinguals were delayed for interlingual homophones relative to monolingual controls. At the same time, participant judgments were sensitive to subphonemic cues. These findings suggest that auditory lexical access is language nonselective but is sensitive to language-specific characteristics of the input. In 2 cross-modal priming experiments, visual lexical decision times were shortest for monolingual controls preceded by their auditory equivalents. Response times to interlingual homophones accompanied by their corresponding auditory English or Dutch counterparts were also shorter than in unrelated conditions. However, they were longer than in the related monolingual control conditions, providing evidence for online competition of the 2 near-homophonic representations. Experiment 3 suggested that participants used sublexical cues to differentiate the 2 versions of a homophone after language nonselective access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time course of inhibition in color-response and word-response versions of the Stroop task.

Translation models of the Stroop effect predict inhibition when the relevant stimulus type does not match the response type, but a lack of inhibition when it matches. All 4 combinations of relevant stimulus type (color or word) and response type (color or word) were evaluated at several stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) in a button-pressing version of the Stroop task to assess this prediction. Inhibition was greatest when the relevant stimulus type did not match the response type. However, in contrast to predictions of translation models, color and word responses produced different patterns of inhibition and facilitation over SOA, implying differences in the word-to-color and color-to-word translation mechanisms, and inhibition was obtained in both of the color-response tasks. A modification of the translation model is proposed that incorporates a translation mechanism and accommodates special characteristics of word processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological and semantic activation in reading kanji characters.

In a large proportion of the complex kanji characters resulting from the combination of two radicals, the left radical gives information about the meaning of the whole character, and the right one gives cues to pronunciation. In this study, this feature was exploited to investigate the relative contribution of semantic and phonological information in the process of recognizing a word written in kanji. In 2 experiments, a technique was used in which part of the target character (i.e.. the left radical, carrying the semantic information; the right, phonetic radical, or a fragment) was presented shortly (60 or 180 ms stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]) before the exposure of the whole character, which had to be named as fast as possible. Earlier exposure of the phonetic radical produced facilitation of the naming response, which was stronger at the 180-ms SOA than at the 60-ms SOA, whereas preexposure of the semantic radical had a weak facilitatory effect at the 60-ms SOA and some inhibition at the 180-ms SOA. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Handedness and performance variability as factors influencing mirror movement occurrence

The priming effects of graphemically similar (e.g., HOSE) and graphemically dissimilar (e.g., ROWS) rhymes on the naming of target words (NOSE) were examined at prime-target stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of 36, 70, and 250 msec. A four-field presentation procedure was used of mask-prime-mask-target. The effects of rhyme primes were measured relative to those of nonrhyming control primes (CHEF, DISH) that matched the rhymes in frequency and length and shared no letters in the same positions. At SOAs of 36 and 70 msec, rhyme priming was inhibitory and equal for graphemically similar and graphemically dissimilar rhymes. At SOA = 250 msec, rhyme priming was insignificant with a tendency toward facilitation. The results are discussed in the context of (1) contrasting effects of complete versus partial phonological overlap within a prime-target pair, and (2) the hypothesis that phonological codes stabilize fastest and provide, therefore, the earliest and major constraint on word recognition.     

Semantic facilitation of lexical access during sentence processing.

In three experiments we investigated the effect of a sentence context on naming time for a target word. Contexts were presented by using a rapid serial visual presentation; subjects named the last word of the sentence. In the first two experiments, facilitation was observed for a fully congruent context containing a subject and verb that were weakly related to the target word. No facilitation was observed when either the subject or verb was replaced with a more neutral word. In the third experiment, the fully congruent contexts were modified either to preserve or to disrupt the original relation between the subject and verb. Facilitation was observed in both conditions. The full pattern of results suggests that a combination of lexical items can prime a target word in the absence of priming by any of the lexical items individually. This combination priming is not dependent upon the overall meaning of the sentence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of competition for attention: Attention is initially labile.

Competition for attention between 2 written words was investigated by presenting the words briefly in a single stream of distractors (Experiment 1) or in different streams (Experiment 2- 6), using rapid serial visual presentation at 53 ms/item. Stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was varied from 0 to 213 ms. At all SOAs there was strong competition, but which word was more likely to be reported shifted markedly with SOA. At SOAs in the range of 13-53 ms the second word was more likely to be reported, but at 213 ms, the advantage switched to the first word, as in the attentional blink. A 2-stage competition model of attention is proposed in which attention to a detected target is labile in Stage 1. Stage 1 ends when one target is identified, initiating a serial Stage 2 process of consolidation of that target. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Decomposition of repetition priming components in picture naming.

Cognitive mechanisms underlying repetition priming in picture naming were decomposed in several experiments. Sets of encoding manipulations meant to selectively prime or reduce priming in object identification or word production components of picture naming were combined factorially to dissociate processes underlying priming in picture naming. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 were conducted with Spanish-English bilingual participants and bilingual materials. Experiments 4, 5A, and 5B were single-language experiments in English or Spanish. A simple process model was used to formalize the theoretical predictions and test them across all experiments simultaneously. Object identification and word production processes were selectively influenced in an additive manner, which suggests that the 2 sets of processes are independent and sequential. The patterns of facilitation support a quantitative model of transfer-appropriate processing in which shared processes from encoding to test are the causal basis and speeded processes are the mechanism of facilitation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowledge of a second language influences auditory word recognition in the native language.

Many studies in bilingual visual word recognition have demonstrated that lexical access is not language selective. However, research on bilingual word recognition in the auditory modality has been scarce, and it has yielded mixed results with regard to the degree of this language nonselectivity. In the present study, we investigated whether listening to a second language (L2) is influenced by knowledge of the native language (L1) and, more important, whether listening to the L1 is also influenced by knowledge of an L2. Additionally, we investigated whether the listener's selectivity of lexical access is influenced by the speaker's L1 (and thus his or her accent). With this aim, Dutch–English bilinguals completed an English (Experiment 1) and a Dutch (Experiment 3) auditory lexical decision task. As a control, the English auditory lexical decision task was also completed by English monolinguals (Experiment 2). Targets were pronounced by a native Dutch speaker with English as the L2 (Experiments 1A, 2A, and 3A) or by a native English speaker with Dutch as the L2 (Experiments 1B, 2B, and 3B). In all experiments, Dutch–English bilinguals recognized interlingual homophones (e.g., lief [sweet]–leaf /li:f/) significantly slower than matched control words, whereas the English monolinguals showed no effect. These results indicate that (a) lexical access in bilingual auditory word recognition is not language selective in L2, nor in L1, and (b) language-specific subphonological cues do not annul cross-lingual interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Language-specific lexical access of homographs by bilinguals.

Spanish-English bilinguals were tested in a two-part lexical-decision experiment. Word stimuli were (a) noncognates (words with differently spelled translations, e.g., dog and perro), (b) cognates (words with identically spelled translations, e.g., actual), and (c) homographic noncognates (words spelled identically in both languages but with different meanings, e.g., red). The noncognate and cognate words had similar frequencies of usage in each language, but the homographic noncognates differed. In each part of the experiment, subjects looked for words in a single target language. In both parts, word latencies were primarily determined by frequency of usage of a word in the target language. In the unanticipated cross-language-transfer trials in Part 2, no cross-language facilitation of noncognate translations was found. However, there was equivalent cross-language facilitation of cognates and homographic noncognates (i.e, repetitions of the same spelling pattern). This cross-language transfer was independent of the target language and frequency of usage in the target languages. The results of this experiment are consistent with the hypothesis that lexical information is represented in language-specific lexicons and that word recognition requires searching the language-appropriate lexicon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bilingualism, Aging, and Cognitive Control: Evidence From the Simon Task.

Previous work has shown that bilingualism is associated with more effective controlled processing in children; the assumption is that the constant management of 2 competing languages enhances executive functions (E. Bialystok, 2001). The present research attempted to determine whether this bilingual advantage persists for adults and whether bilingualism attenuates the negative effects of aging on cognitive control in older adults. Three studies are reported that compared the performance of monolingual and bilingual middle-aged and older adults on the Simon task. Bilingualism was associated with smaller Simon effect costs for both age groups; bilingual participants also responded more rapidly to conditions that placed greater demands on working memory. In all cases the bilingual advantage was greater for older participants. It appears, therefore, that controlled processing is carried out more effectively by bilinguals and that bilingualism helps to offset age-related losses in certain executive processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)