Disentangling the role of deviant letter position on cognate word processing

The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found at: https://osf.io/mqhu5/?view_only=94cdf0d86e0b4e7e8b2757e33f6a78ce.The way of coding letter position has been extensively assessed during the recognition of native words, leading to the development of a new generation of models that assume more flexible letter position coding schemes compared to classical computational models such as the interactive activation (IA) model. However, determining whether similar letter position encoding mechanisms occur during the bilingual word recognition has been largely less explored despite its implications for the leading model of bilingual word recognition (multilink) as it assumes the input-coding scheme of the IA model. In this study, we aimed to examine this issue through the manipulation of the position of the deviant letter of cognate words (external and internal letters). Two experiments were conducted with Catalan-Spanish bilinguals (a masked priming lexical decision task and a two-alternative forced-choice task) and their respective monolingual controls. The results revealed a differential processing for the first letter in comparison to the other letters as well as modulations as a function of language cue, suggesting amendments to the input-coding scheme of the multilink model.This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Center (CIPsi/UM), School of Psychology, University of Minho, supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653. This was been also funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PCIN-2015-165-C02-02 and MINECO/FEDER), by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (RED2018-102615-T), and by the Research Promotion Program of the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (2018PFR-URV-B2-32)

Of beavers and tables: the role of animacy in the processing of grammatical gender within a picture-word interference task

Grammatical gender processing during language production has classically been studied using the so-called picture-word interference (PWI) task. In this procedure, participants are presented with pictures they must name using target nouns while ignoring superimposed written distractor nouns. Variations in response times are expected depending on the congruency between the gender values of targets and distractors. However, there have been disparate results in terms of the mandatory character of an agreement context to observe competitive gender effects and the interpretation of the direction of these effects in Romance languages, this probably due to uncontrolled variables such as animacy. In the present study, we conducted two PWI experiments with European Portuguese speakers who were asked to produce bare nouns. The percentage of animate targets within the list was manipulated: 0, 25, 50, and 100%. A gender congruency effect was found restricted to the 0% list (all targets were inanimate). Results support the selection of gender in transparent languages in the absence of an agreement context, as predicted by the Gender Acquisition and Processing (GAP) hypothesis (Sá-Leite et al., 2019), and are interpreted through the attentional mechanisms involved in the PWI paradigm, in which the processing of animate targets would be favored to the detriment of distractors due to biological relevance and semantic prioritizationThis work was supported by the Government of Spain, Ministry of Education and Vocational Training through the Training program for Academic Staff (FPU [BOE-B-2017-2646]), the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation with the research project PID2019-110583GB-I00, the Galician Government (grant for research groups ED431B 2019/2020), and by the FCT and FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653S

The role of emotionality in the acquisition of new concrete and abstract words

A processing advantage for emotional words relative to neutral words has been widely demonstrated in the monolingual domain (e.g., Kuperman et al., 2014). It is also well-known that, in bilingual speakers who have a certain degree of proficiency in their second language, the effects of the affective content of words on cognition are not restricted to the native language (e.g., Ferré et al., 2010). The aim of the present study was to test whether this facilitatory effect can also be obtained during the very early stages of word acquisition. In the context of a novel word learning paradigm, participants were trained on a set of Basque words by associating them to their Spanish translations. Words’ concreteness and affective valence were orthogonally manipulated. Immediately after the learning phase and 1 week later, participants were tested in a Basque go-no go lexical decision task as well as in a translation task in which they had to provide the Spanish translation of the Basque words. A similar pattern of results was found across tasks and sessions, revealing main effects of concreteness and emotional content as well as an interaction between both factors. Thus, the emotional content facilitated the acquisition of abstract, but not concrete words, in the new language, with a more reliable effect for negative words than for positive ones. The results are discussed in light of the embodied theoretical view of semantic representation proposed by Kousta et al. (2011)This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PSI2012-37623 and PSI2012-32834). Besides, it was funded by FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) through the state budget, with reference IF/00784/2013/CP1158/CT0013S

Semantic representations of new cognate vs. non cognate words: evidence from two second language learning methods

How is the new vocabulary connected with the semantic memory? Starting from the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), this study aimed to explore the links established between the new words and the conceptual system manipulating two learning methods and the type of word to be learned (cognate vs. no cognate). The data showed that the learning method and the type of words modulate the organization of bilingual memory

The role of animacy on European Portuguese relative clauses attachment: Evidence from production and comprehension tasks

En este trabajo se evaluó el papel de la animacidad en la desambiguación de cláusulas de relativo con doble antecedente en portugués europeo (PE). El estudio de cómo resuelve el procesador este tipo de ambigüedades ha sido objeto de gran interés en la investigación; sin embargo, en PE ésta ha sido escasa y poco consistente. Además, dado que la literatura más reciente ha destacado la relevancia de variables extrasintácticas en este proceso, se realizaron dos estudios con el objetivo de evaluar las estrategias de adjunción en PE manipulando la animacidad de los nombres. En el estudio 1 se empleó una tarea de compleción de frases y en el estudio 2 una tarea de lectura auto-administrada. En ambos, los resultados revelaron una preferencia significativa por la estrategia de adjunción alta. No obstante, el tipo de estrategia fue modulado por la animacidad de los nombres, de tal manera que se prefirió la estrategia de adjunción baja cuando el primer nombre era inanimado y el segundo animado. Estos resultados arrojan luz sobre el uso de estas estrategias en PE y parecen apoyar la idea de que, en fases relativamente tempranas del procesamiento, el procesador atiende a información no exclusivamente sintáctica.This work analyses the role of animacy in European Portuguese (EP) attachment preferences of relative clauses to complex noun phrases. Although the study of how the human parser solves this type of ambiguities has been the focus of extensive research in the literature, what is known about EP is both limited and puzzling. Additionally, as recent studies have stressed the importance of extra-syntactic variables in this syntactic process, two experiments were carried out in order to assess EP attachment preferences considering four animacy conditions: Study 1 used a sentence-completion-task, and Study 2 a self-paced reading task. In both studies results showed a significant preference for high attachment in EP. They also showed that this preference was modulated by the animacy of the host NP: when the first host was inanimate and the second animate, the parser changes its preference to a low attachment strategy. These findings clarify previous results on EP and strengthen the idea that even in early stages of processing the parser is sensitive to extra-syntactic information

Grammatical gender processing in bilinguals: An analytic review

In this review article, we analyze how grammatical gender is represented and processed in the bilingual mind. To that end, we review the data from 13 existing behavioral studies of mainly late second language (L2) learners on the so-called gender congruency (GC) effect (facilitated processing for translation equivalents with the same gender, in comparison to those with a different gender) in L2 production and comprehension. The majority of the results showed a GC effect, regardless of the type of language involved. However, the state of cognateness of the target nouns, as well as the similarity between the gender systems of the bilingual speakers and their L2 proficiency, modulated the results. Interestingly, a gender agreement context is not required in order to observe gender effects, in that they are also observed with bare nouns. Overall, the findings support an integrative view of bilingual gender representation, with competitive and inhibitory processes at different levels of language processing underlying cross-language GC effects.This paper was funded by the Government of Spain-Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports– through the Training program for Academic Staff (Ayudas para la Formación del Profesorado Universitario, FPU grant BOE-B-2017-2646), the research project with reference PSI2015-65116-P granted by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the grant for research groups with reference GRC 2015/006 given by the Galician Government. This paper was funded by the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal) through the state budget with reference IF / 00784/2013 / CP1158 / CT0013. The study has also been partially supported by the FCT and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653)

Lexico-syntactic interactions in the resolution of relative clause ambiguities in a second language (L2): The role of cognate status and L2 proficiency

There is extensive evidence showing that bilinguals activate lexical representations in a non-selective way both when words are presented in isolation and in sentence contexts. Recent research has shown the existence of cross-language activation at the syntactic level as well. However, the extent to which the lexical and syntactic levels of representation interact during second language (L2) sentence processing, and how these interactions are modulated by L2 proficiency remain unclear. In this paper, we explore how native speakers of European-Portuguese (L1) who are learning English as an L2 at different levels of proficiency (intermediate vs. advanced) resolve relative clause (RC) syntactic ambiguities in their L2. European Portuguese and English native speakers were used as controls. Participants were asked to perform a sentence completion task, with cognates and noncognates critically embedded in the complex noun phrase (NP) preceding the RC, and which contained its antecedent. Results revealed that L2 learners, like English controls, preferred to attach the RC to the last host of the complex NP, regardless of L2 proficiency. Importantly, the cognate status of the complex NP modulated the results, although, contrary to our expectation, the presence of cognates induced less L1 syntax interference compared to noncognates.This study was conducted at Psychology Research Centre (PSI/01662), University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). It is also part of the research project EXPL/MHC-PCN/0859/2013 UID/PSI/01662/2013 and PSI2015-65116-P from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. We would like to thank all the institutions that collaborated in data collection: The International House (Braga, Portugal, particularly its director Janet Sinclair), the Babelium (Braga, University of Minho, namely Anabela Rato and Joao Paulo Silva), the Wolfson Laboratory (Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, namely Prof. Robin Walker and Hannah Harvey), and Adimovel (particularly Simao Gomes and Conceicao Mendes). Finally, our gratitude to all the participants who took part, without whom this study would not have been possible

Language balance rather than age of acquisition: a study on the cross-linguistic gender congruency effect in Portuguese–German bilinguals

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UE9XHThe cross-linguistic gender congruency effect (GCE; a facilitation on gender retrieval for translations of the same gender) is a robust phenomenon analysed almost exclusively with late bilinguals. However, it is important to ascertain whether it is modulated by age of acquisition (AoA) and language proficiency. We asked 64 early and late bilinguals of European Portuguese and German to do a forward and backward translation task. A measure of language balance was calculated through the DIALANG test. Analyses included this factor along with the gender congruency between translations, the target language, and the AoA of both languages, among others. Results showed a GCE for European Portuguese that was independent of the AoA and greater the higher the language imbalance. We propose that changes in proficiency in any of the languages create situations of dependency between them which allow cross-linguistic gender interaction to occur and effects to emerge depending on gender transparency.This work was funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Portuguese State Budget (UIDP/01662/2020) and the grant UIDB/00305/2020, as well as by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, through the Training program for Academic Staff (Ayudas para la Formación del Profesorado Universitario [FPU16/06983]), and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [research project PID2019-110583GB-I00

The representation and processing of synonyms and translations: a masked priming study with European Portuguese-English bilinguals

Aims/Objectives: According to Multilink, words from the first (L1) and (L2) second languages share a common store and their access is non-selective. Thus, the presentation of a target word activates in parallel lexical candidates from both languages that share form and semantic overlap. The degree of words' activation also depends on their resting levels of activation (words that are more used have a higher resting levels of activation). Since non-cognate translations and synonyms share meaning, they may be seen as qualitatively similar lexical representations, and consequently subject to similar processing if their frequency levels are matched. However, whereas masked priming lexical decision studies with synonyms failed to find reliable masked priming effects, the majority of those with non-cognate translations (especially in the forward direction, i.e., from L1 to L2) showed significant effects. The present study extends those findings by directly comparing the processing of synonyms and translations in bilinguals.Design/methodology: A masked priming lexical decision task (targets were preceded by a related 50-ms word [an L1 translation or an L2 synonym] or by a 50-ms unrelated word) was conducted. Lexical frequency of usage was higher for primes than for targets.Data and analysis: Reaction times and accuracy from 24 sequential (highly proficient) European Portuguese-English bilinguals were analyzed with linear mixed effects models.Findings/conclusions: Results showed priming effects for translations, but not for synonyms, indicating a differential processing of synonyms and non-cognate translations.Originality: This is the first empirical work that directly compares the processing of synonyms and translations in bilinguals by using the same targets words for both prime types.Significance/implications: The findings contradict the Multilink model, since they index a differential representational nature of lexico-semantic links for translations and synonyms. Modifications in the model are needed to account the data.- The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (CIPsi), University of Minho, and supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the Portuguese State Budget (UID/01662/2020). It has also been supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) (Reference ANR-16-CE28-0009-01)

Does phonological overlap of cognate words modulate cognate acquisition and processing in developing and skilled readers?

Very few studies exist on the role of cross-language similarities in cognate word acquisition. Here we sought to explore, for the first time, the interplay of orthography (O) and phonology (P) during the early stages of cognate word acquisition, looking at children and adults with the same level of foreign language proficiency, and by using two variants of the word-association learning paradigm (auditory learning method vs. auditory + written method). Eighty participants (forty children and forty adults, native speakers of European Portuguese [EP]), learned a set of EP-Catalan cognate words and non-cognate words. Among the cognate words, the degree of orthographic and phonological similarity was manipulated. Half of the children and adult participants learned the new words via an L2 auditory and written-L1 word association method, while the other half learned the same words only through an L2 auditoryL1 word association method. Both groups were tested in an auditory recognition task and a go/no-go lexical decision task. Results revealed a disadvantage for children in comparison to adults, which was reduced in the auditory learning method. Furthermore, there was an advantage for cognates relative to non-cognates regardless of the age of participants. Importantly, there were modulations in cognate word processing as a function of the degree of O and P overlap which were restricted to children. The findings are discussed in light of the most relevant bilingual models of word recognition.This research was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and was funded by the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) through the state budget, with reference IF / 00784/2013 / CP1158 / CT0013. The study has also been partially supported by the FCT and the EP Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds, and co-financed by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). It has also been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PCIN-2015-165-C02-02).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio