The Impact of Individual Differences on Cross-Language Activation of Meaning by Phonology

We investigated how individual differences in language proficiency and executive control impact cross-language meaning activation through phonology. Ninety-six university students read English sentences that contained French target words. Target words were high- and low-frequency French interlingual homophones (i.e., words that share pronunciation, but not meaning across langauges; mot means ‘word’ in French and sounds like ‘mow’ in English) and matched French control words (e.g., mois – ‘month’ in French). Readers could use the homophones’ shared phonology to activate their English meanings and, ultimately, make sense of the sentence (e.g., Tony was too lazy to mot/mois the grass on Sunday). Shorter reading times were observed on interlingual homophones than control words, suggesting that phonological representations in one language activate cross-language semantic representations. Importantly, the magnitude of the effect was modulated by word frequency, and several participant-level characteristics, including French proficiency, English word knowledge, and executive control ability

Figuring Out How Verb-Particle Constructions Are Understood During L1 and L2 Reading

The aim of this paper was to investigate first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) reading of verb particle constructions (VPCs) among English–French bilingual adults. VPCs, or phrasal verbs, are highly common collocations of a verb paired with a particle, such as eat up or chew out, that often convey a figurative meaning. VPCs vary in form (eat up the candy vs. eat the candy up) and in other factors, such as the semantic contribution of the constituent words to the overall meaning (semantic transparency) and frequency. Much like classic forms of idioms, VPCs are difficult for L2 users. Here, we present two experiments that use eye-tracking to discover factors that influence the ease with which VPCs are processed by bilingual readers. In Experiment 1, we compared L1 reading of adjacent vs. split VPCs, and then explored whether the general pattern was driven by item-level factors. L1 readers did not generally find adjacent VPCs (eat up the candy) easier to process than split VPCs (eat the candy up); however, VPCs low in co-occurrence strength (i.e., low semantic transparency) and high in frequency were easiest to process in the adjacent form during first pass reading. In Experiment 2, we compared L2 reading of adjacent vs. split VPCs, and then explored whether the general pattern varied with item-level or participant-level factors. L2 readers generally allotted more second pass reading time to split vs. adjacent forms, and there was some evidence that this pattern was greater for L2 English readers who had less English experience. In contrast with L1 reading, there was no influence of item differences on L2 reading behavior. These data suggest that L1 readers may have lexicalized VPC representations that are directly retrieved during comprehension, whereas L2 readers are more likely to compositionally process VPCs given their more general preference for adjacent particles, as demonstrated by longer second pass reading time for all split items

The role of mentalizing capacity and ecological language diversity on irony comprehension in bilingual adults

Diverse bilingual experiences have implications for language comprehension, including pragmatic elements such as verbal irony. Irony comprehension is shaped by an interplay of linguistic, cognitive, and social factors, including individual differences in bilingual experience. We examined the relationship between individual differences related to bilingualism, specifically, the capacity to understand others’ mental states and ambient exposure to language diversity, on irony comprehension. We tested 54 healthy bilingual adults, living in a linguistically diverse region—Montréal, Canada—on an irony comprehension task. This task involved reading positive and negative short stories that concluded with an ironic or literal statement, which were rated on appropriateness and perceived irony. While both irony forms were rated as less appropriate and more ironic than literal statements, ironic criticisms (following a negative context) were rated as more appropriate and higher in perceived irony than ironic compliments (following a positive context). As expected, these ratings varied as a function of individual differences in mentalizing and neighborhood language diversity. Greater mentalizing patterned with more appropriate ratings to ironic statements in high language diversity neighborhoods and with less appropriate ratings to ironic statements in low language diversity neighborhoods. Perceived irony ratings to ironic compliments increased with mentalizing as neighborhood language diversity increased. These results indicate that pragmatic language comprehension and its social cognitive underpinnings may be environmentally contextualized processes

The future of bilingualism research: Insufferably optimistic and replete with new questions

The scientific process applied to any domain is a thing of power and beauty. It enables its practitioners to systematically and rigorously pursue questions of importance, in a manner that is, by necessity, adaptive and tenacious. As was his way with most matters of relevance to psychology, the words of William James (The Principles of Psychology, 1890) are illustrative here:Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely. (p. 7

Moving toward a neuroplasticity view of bilingualism, executive control, and aging.

Normal aging is an inevitable race between increasing knowledge and decreasing cognitive capacity. Crucial to understanding and promoting successful aging is determining which of these factors dominates for particular neurocognitive functions. Here, we focus on the human capacity for language, for which healthy older adults are simultaneously advantaged and disadvantaged. In recent years, a more hopeful view of cognitive aging has emerged from work suggesting that age-related declines in executive control functions are buffered by life-long bilingualism. [...] In what follows, we set out the theoretical assumptions and empirical support of the bilingual advantages perspective, review what we know about language, cognitive control, and aging generally, and then highlight several of the relatively few studies that have investigated bilingual language processing in older adults, either on their own or in comparison with monolingual older adults. We conclude with several recommendations for how the field ought to proceed to achieve a more multifactorial view of bilingualism that emphasizes the notion of neuroplasticity over that of simple bilingual versus monolingual group comparisons

How emotional prosody guides your way: Evidence from eye movements

This study investigated cross-modal effects of emotional voice tone (prosody) on face processing during instructed visual search. Specifically, we evaluated whether emotional prosodic cues in speech have a rapid, mandatory influence on eye movements to an emotionally-related face, and whether these effects persist as semantic information unfolds. Participants viewed an array of six emotional faces while listening to instructions spoken in an emotionally congruent or incongruent prosody (e.g.; "Click on the happy face" spoken in a happy or angry voice). The duration and frequency of eye fixations were analyzed when only prosodic cues were emotionally meaningful (pre-emotional label window: "Click on the/..."), and after emotional semantic information was available (post-emotional label window: ".../happy face"). In the pre-emotional label window, results showed that participants made immediate use of emotional prosody, as reflected in significantly longer frequent fixations to emotionally congruent versus incongruent faces. However, when explicit semantic information in the instructions became available (post-emotional label window), the influence of prosody on measures of eye gaze was relatively minimal. Our data show that emotional prosody has a rapid impact on gaze behavior during social information processing, but that prosodic meanings can be overridden by semantic cues when linguistic information is task relevant. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved