Languages, Literatures, & Cultures
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Item SELECTIVITY IN LEXICAL ACCESS AMONG BILINGUALS OF ORTHOGRAPHICALLY DISTINCT SCRIPTS AND THE ROLE OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS(2020) Al Thowaini, Buthainah M; Jiang, Nan; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A fundamental inquiry within bilingual processing research addresses the underlying mechanisms of lexical access. Research involving bilinguals of orthographically similar scripts has revealed that cross-language activation is non-selective, which supposedly causes the bilingual brain to regularly manage the activation of two languages. Such continuous management of two languages has led some researchers to argue that the bilingual experience contributes to enhanced executive control. The research on selectivity in lexical access, nevertheless, has overwhelmingly involved bilingual speakers of orthographically similar scripts, with a scarcity of studies involving bilingual speakers of orthographically distinct scripts. Additionally, while active management of both languages is expected for bilinguals, little is known about whether language selectivity is related to individual variation in executive control. Instead, research investigating executive functions (EFs) in relation to bilingual processes has primarily been conducted within the context of switch costs, which has been associated with methodological issues. In light of the issues outlined above, the current study investigated selectivity in lexical access among bilinguals of orthographically distinct scripts and the relationship between the degree of selectivity and EFs (i.e., top-down goal maintenance, interference resolution, and working memory capacity). In addition to adopting an individual differences approach to lexical access, the study manipulated the degree of language task demands (comprehension and production). The study employed alternative non-switch tasks to investigate the relationships between EFs and cross-language activation. One hundred and thirty-eight Arabic-English bilinguals, 25 English native speakers, and 24 Arabic native speakers participated in a phoneme monitoring task and a masked primed lexical decision task involving monolingual materials. Bilingual participants also completed non-verbal visuo-spatial and visual single n-back tasks, as well as an AX-CPT task. The analyses revealed non-selective lexical access in language production but were inconclusive for language comprehension, where participants varied in the degree of selectivity. In addition, the results, although preliminary, demonstrated that top-down goal maintenance partially accounted for some of the variances in the degree of selectivity in language comprehension and production. The results suggest that selectivity is influenced by task-dependent variables as well as individual differences in executive functions.Item LOOKING INTO BILINGUALISM THROUGH THE HERITAGE SPEAKER'S MIND(2012) Lee-Ellis, Sunyoung; DeKeyser, Robert M; Lidz, Jeffrey L; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Due to their unique profile as childhood bilinguals whose first language (L1) became weaker than their second language (L2), heritage speakers can shed light on three key issues in bilingualism - timing, input, and cross-linguistic interaction. The heritage speakers of focus in this dissertation are Korean second generation immigrants mainly exposed to their heritage language (HL) when young but who became more dominant in their L2 later in life. The ability of Korean heritage speakers in both their HL (Korean) and L2 (English), including speech perception, translation priming, and grammatical intuition were examined. Six psycholinguistic tasks, a bilingual experience questionnaire, and Korean and English proficiency tests were administered. Data were collected from 48 Korean heritage speakers, 36 English speakers learning Korean as adults and 36 Korean speakers learning English as adults. The two L2-learner comparison groups also served as native speaker controls for their respective native languages. The Korean heritage speakers raised in an English-speaking country, despite having been exposed to Korean first and throughout their lives, exhibited significant weaknesses in their Korean competence while exhibiting (near-)native-like competence in English. It is thus argued that the input-dominance switch that occurred before the critical period ended caused a dramatic reorganization of early/first established linguistic representation, which challenges some previous views on the implasticity of human language representation (e.g., Pallier et al, 1997). When compared to adult L2 learners of Korean, heritage speakers exhibited a slight advantage in speech perception and translation priming while showing no advantage in the grammaticality judgment of locative alternation. It is therefore suggested here that heritage speakers may have an advantage over adult L2 learners with early-acquired linguistic features and with implicit processing capacity. Another notable finding is that Korean heritage speakers showed less-than-nativelike performance in locative alternation in both Korean and English, a finding that highlights cross-linguistic interaction in bilingualism. The standard practice of comparing bilinguals to monolingual competence in SLA studies is thus called into question. Finally, although individual differences among the heritage participants in the current study were best predicted by language aptitude and amount of instruction, no conclusive claim regarding the role of language aptitude or instruction in early bilingualism is proposed here because it is unclear whether such effects influenced the childhood bilingual development or re-learning during adulthood of the current heritage participants. In short, timing, input, and cross-linguistic interaction all seem to contribute significantly to the development of bilingual competence. The heritage speakers examined in this dissertation turned out to be an excellent testing ground for all three of these ingredients of language acquisition.Item Mix and Switch Effects in Bilingual Language Processing(2012) Koeth, Joel Todd; Jiang, Nan; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study utilized a novel task design in an effort to identify the source of the second language processing advantage commonly reported in mixed language conditions, investigate switch cost asymmetry in non-balanced bilinguals, and identify task-related variables that potentially contribute to inconsistent results across studies with similar participant populations. Seventy highly-proficient Korean-English bilinguals completed modified picture naming, semantic categorization, and lexical decision tasks, as well as a cognitive control task designed to examine the potential relationship between lexical control and general cognitive control. While no significant relationship was found between lexical control and general cognitive control, several key task-related variables emerged with respect to mix and switch effects. Specifically, verbal production requirements and increased second language repetition effects significantly influenced results. Furthermore, this study revealed potential effects of semantic load as well as script differences in receptive tasks. Results from this study highlight several key variables that contribute to bilingual mix and switch effects, as well as task design-related considerations for future bilingual mix and switch studies.