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Working memory influences on cross-language activation during bilingual lexical disambiguation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2010

ANA B. ARÊAS DA LUZ FONTES  and
ANA I. SCHWARTZ
ANA B. ARÊAS DA LUZ FONTES*
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at El Paso
ANA I. SCHWARTZ
Affiliation:
The University of Texas at El Paso
*
Address for correspondence: Ana B. Arêas da Luz Fontes, Department of Psychology, 500 W. University Ave., University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas 79968, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

This study investigated the role of verbal working memory on bilingual lexical disambiguation. Spanish–English bilinguals read sentences that ended in either a cognate or noncognate homonym or a control word. Participants decided whether follow-up target words were related in meaning to the sentences. On critical trials, sentences biased the subordinate meaning of a homonym and were followed by targets related to the dominant meaning. Bilinguals with high span were faster at rejecting unrelated targets when the sentences ended in a homonym, whereas bilinguals with low span were slower. Furthermore, error rates for bilinguals with low span showed cognate inhibition, while bilinguals with high span showed no effects of cross-language activation. Results demonstrated that bilinguals with high span benefit from shared lexical codes whether these converge on to a single semantic representation (cognates) or not (homonyms). Conversely, bilinguals with low span showed inhibition from the competing lexical codes, even when they converge onto a single semantic representation.

Keywords

bilingualismlexical ambiguitycross-language activationworking memory
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , July 2011 , pp. 360 - 370
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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