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Reading a book in one or two languages? An eye movement study of cognate facilitation in L1 and L2 reading*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

USCHI COP Open the ORCID record for USCHI COP [Opens in a new window] ,
NICOLAS DIRIX ,
EVA VAN ASSCHE ,
DENIS DRIEGHE  and
WOUTER DUYCK
USCHI COP
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
NICOLAS DIRIX*
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
EVA VAN ASSCHE
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
DENIS DRIEGHE
Affiliation:
University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
WOUTER DUYCK
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
*
Address for correspondence: Nicolas Dirix, Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium. [email protected]
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Abstract

This study examined how noun reading by bilinguals is influenced by orthographic similarity with their translation equivalents in another language. Eye movements of Dutch–English bilinguals reading an entire novel in L1 and L2 were analyzed.

In L2, we found a facilitatory effect of orthographic overlap. Additional facilitation for identical cognates was found for later eye movement measures. This shows that the complex, semantic context of a novel does not eliminate cross-lingual activation in natural reading.

In L1 we detected non-identical cognate facilitation for first fixation durations of longer nouns. Identical cognate facilitation was found on total reading times for high frequent nouns. This study is the first to show cognate facilitation in L1 reading of narrative text. This shows that even when reading a novel in the mother tongue, lexical access is not restricted to the target language.

Keywords

eye trackingnatural readingcognate Facilitationcross-lingual Interactions
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , August 2017 , pp. 747 - 769
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by a grant from the FWO (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) and concerted research action BOF13/GOA/032 of Ghent University. We thank Dr. Søren Feodor Nielsen at Copenhagen Business School for the R-code for calculating the variance inflation factor (VIF).

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