Asymmetric switch costs in numeral naming and number word reading: Implications for models of bilingual language production

One approach used to gain insight into the processes underlying bilingual language comprehension and production examines the costs that arise from switching languages. For unbalanced bilinguals, asymmetric switch costs are reported in speech production, where the switch cost for Ll is larger than the switch cost for L2, whereas, symmetric switch costs are reported in language comprehension tasks, where the cost of switching is the same for L1 and L2. Presently, it is unclear why asymmetric switch costs are observed in speech production, but not in language comprehension. Three experiments are reported that simultaneously examine methodological explanations of task related differences in the switch cost asymmetry and the predictions of three accounts of the switch cost asymmetry in speech production. The results of these experiments suggest that (1) the type of language task (comprehension vs. production) determines whether an asymmetric switch cost is observed and (2) at least some of the switch cost asymmetry arises within the language system

Gender assignment and gender agreement in advanced French interlanguage: a cross-sectional study

An analysis of 519 gender errors (out of 9,378 modifiers) in the advanced French interlanguage of 27 Dutch L1 speakers confirms earlier findings that gender assignment and/or agreement remain problematic for learners at all levels. A hypothesis derived from Pienemann's Processability Theory (1998a) that accuracy rates would be higher for gender agreement in structures involving no exchange of grammatical information between constituents was not confirmed. The analysis of interindividual and intra-individual variation in gender accuracy rates revealed effects from avoidance and generalisation strategies, from linguistic variables, sociobiographical variables and psycholinguistic variables. We argue that gender errors can originate at the lemma level, at the gender node level, or at the lexeme level. Different psycholinguistic scenarios are presented to account for intra-individual variation in gender assignment and agreement

The influence of semantic and phonological factors on syntactic decisions: An event-related brain potential study

During language production and comprehension, information about a word's syntactic properties is sometimes needed. While the decision about the grammatical gender of a word requires access to syntactic knowledge, it has also been hypothesized that semantic (i.e., biological gender) or phonological information (i.e., sound regularities) may influence this decision. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while native speakers of German processed written words that were or were not semantically and/or phonologically marked for gender. Behavioral and ERP results showed that participants were faster in making a gender decision when words were semantically and/or phonologically gender marked than when this was not the case, although the phonological effects were less clear. In conclusion, our data provide evidence that even though participants performed a grammatical gender decision, this task can be influenced by semantic and phonological factors

Can monolinguals be like bilinguals? Evidence from dialect switching

Bilinguals rely on cognitive control mechanisms like selective activation and inhibition of lexical entries to prevent intrusions from the non-target language. We present cross-linguistic evidence that these mechanisms also operate in bidialectals. Thirty-two native German speakers who sometimes use the Öcher Platt dialect, and thirty-two native English speakers who sometimes use the Dundonian Scots dialect completed a dialect-switching task. Naming latencies were higher for switch than for non-switch trials, and lower for cognate compared to non-cognate nouns. Switch costs were symmetrical, regardless of whether participants actively used the dialect or not. In contrast, sixteen monodialectal English speakers, who performed the dialectswitching task after being trained on the Dundonian words, showed asymmetrical switch costs with longer latencies when switching back into Standard English. These results are reminiscent of findings for balanced vs. unbalanced bilinguals, and suggest that monolingual dialect speakers can recruit control mechanisms in similar ways as bilinguals

Logopenic and nonfluent variants of primary progressive aphasia are differentiated by acoustic measures of speech production

Differentiation of logopenic (lvPPA) and nonfluent/agrammatic (nfvPPA) variants of Primary Progressive Aphasia is important yet remains challenging since it hinges on expert based evaluation of speech and language production. In this study acoustic measures of speech in conjunction with voxel-based morphometry were used to determine the success of the measures as an adjunct to diagnosis and to explore the neural basis of apraxia of speech in nfvPPA. Forty-one patients (21 lvPPA, 20 nfvPPA) were recruited from a consecutive sample with suspected frontotemporal dementia. Patients were diagnosed using the current gold-standard of expert perceptual judgment, based on presence/absence of particular speech features during speaking tasks. Seventeen healthy age-matched adults served as controls. MRI scans were available for 11 control and 37 PPA cases; 23 of the PPA cases underwent amyloid ligand PET imaging. Measures, corresponding to perceptual features of apraxia of speech, were periods of silence during reading and relative vowel duration and intensity in polysyllable word repetition. Discriminant function analyses revealed that a measure of relative vowel duration differentiated nfvPPA cases from both control and lvPPA cases (r2 = 0.47) with 88% agreement with expert judgment of presence of apraxia of speech in nfvPPA cases. VBM analysis showed that relative vowel duration covaried with grey matter intensity in areas critical for speech motor planning and programming: precentral gyrus, supplementary motor area and inferior frontal gyrus bilaterally, only affected in the nfvPPA group. This bilateral involvement of frontal speech networks in nfvPPA potentially affects access to compensatory mechanisms involving right hemisphere homologues. Measures of silences during reading also discriminated the PPA and control groups, but did not increase predictive accuracy. Findings suggest that a measure of relative vowel duration from of a polysyllable word repetition task may be sufficient for detecting most cases of apraxia of speech and distinguishing between nfvPPA and lvPPA