This study investigated the effect of cross-linguistic overlap in L1 and L2 auditory recognition of Spanish–English cognates. The study examined the correlation between objective and subjective measures of overlap and analyzed how these measures predict patterns in auditory recognition. 62 Spanish-speaking learners of English and 63 English-speaking learners of Spanish completed two auditory lexical decision tasks in Spanish and English and a rating task, where they rated the perceived phonological similarity of cognates. The results revealed moderate correlations between subjective and objective measures of overlap. While orthographic overlap had no effect, increased phonological overlap facilitated recognition in L1 and L2 Spanish and English and had larger effects in L2 recognition. Perceived similarity was the best predictor among the measures of overlap. The findings support models suggesting that cross-linguistic co-activation is facilitated by increased form similarity and studies reporting modality dependent effects of cross-linguistic form overlap in lexical recognition.

The relationship between the ways in which words are pronounced and spelled has been shown to affect spoken word processing, and a consistent relationship between pronunciation and spelling has been reported as a possible cause of unreduced pronunciations being easier to process than reduced counterparts although reduced pronunciations occur more frequently. In the present study, we investigate the effect of pronunciation-to-spelling consistency for reduced and unreduced pronunciations in L1 and L2 listeners of a logographic language. More precisely, we compare L1 and L2 Japanese listeners to probe whether they use orthographic information differently when processing reduced and unreduced speech. Using pupillometry, the current study provides evidence that extends the hypothesis about the role of orthography in the processing of reduced speech. Orthographic realization matters in processing for L1 and L2 advanced listeners. More specifically, how consistent the orthographic realization is with its phonological form (phonology-to-orthography consistency) modulates the extent to which reduced pronunciation induces additional processing costs. The results are further discussed in terms of their implications for how listeners process reduced speech and the role of the orthographic form in speech processing.

We investigated whether fluent language production is associated with greater skill in resolving lexical competition during spoken word recognition and ignoring irrelevant information in non-linguistic tasks. Native English monolinguals and native English L2 learners, who varied on measures of discourse/verbal fluency and cognitive control, identified spoken English words from dense (e.g., BAG) and sparse (e.g., BALL) phonological neighborhoods in moderate noise. Participants were slower in recognizing spoken words from denser neighborhoods. The inhibitory effect of phonological neighborhood density was smaller for English monolinguals and L2 learners with higher speech production fluency, but was unrelated to cognitive control as indexed by performance on the Simon task. Converging evidence from within-language effects in monolinguals and cross-language effects in L2 learners suggests that fluent language production involves a competitive selection process that may not engage all domain-general control mechanisms. Results suggest that language experience may capture individual variation in lexical competition resolution.

It has been reported that speakers of Danish understand more Swedish than vice versa. One reason for this asymmetry might be that spoken Swedish is closer to written Danish than vice versa. We hypothesise that literate speakers of Danish use their orthographic knowledge of Danish to decode spoken Swedish. To test this hypothesis, first-language (L1) Danish speakers were confronted with spoken Swedish in a translation task. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were elicited to study the online brain responses during decoding operations. Results showed that ERPs to words whose Swedish pronunciation was inconsistent with the Danish spelling were significantly more negative-going than ERPs to words whose Swedish pronunciation was consistent with the Danish spelling between 750 ms and 900 ms after stimulus onset. Together with higher word-recognition scores for consistent items, our data provide strong evidence that online activation of L1 orthography enhances word recognition of spoken Swedish in literate speakers of Danish.

In two semantic priming experiments, this study examined how southern French speakers process the standard French [o] variant in closed syllables in comparison to their own variant [ɔ]. In Experiment 1, southern French speakers showed facilitation in the processing of the associated target word VIOLET whether the word prime mauve was pronounced by a standard French speaker ([mov]) or a southern French speaker ([mɔv]). More importantly, Experiment 1 has also revealed that words of type mauve, which are subject to dialectal variation, behave exactly in the same way as words of type gomme, which are pronounced with [ɔ] by both southern and standard French speakers, and for which we also found no modulation in the magnitude of the priming effect as a function of the dialect of the speaker. Experiment 2 replicated the priming effect found with the standard French variant [mov], and failed to show a priming effect with nonwords such as [mœv] that also differ from the southern French variant [mɔv] by only one phonetic feature. Our study thus provides further evidence for efficient processing of dialectal variants during spoken word recognition, even if these variants are not part of the speaker’s own productions.

This study investigated the time course of activation of orthographic information in spoken word recognition with two visual world eye-tracking experiments in a task where second language (L2) spoken word forms had to be matched with their printed referents. Participants (n = 64) were native Finnish learners of L2 French ranging from beginners to highly proficient. In Experiment 1, L2 targets (e.g., <cidre> /sidʀ/) were presented with either orthographically overlapping onset competitors (e.g., <cintre> /sɛ̃tʀ/) or phonologically overlapping onset competitors (<cycle> /sikl/). In Experiment 2, L2 targets (e.g., <paume> /pom/) were associated with competitors in Finnish, L1 of the participants, in conditions symmetric to Experiment 1 (<pauhu> /pauhu/ vs. <pommi> /pom:i/). In the within-language experiment (Experiment 1), the difference in target identification between the experimental conditions was not significant. In the between-language experiment (Experiment 2), orthographic information impacted the mapping more in lower proficiency learners, and this effect was observed 600 ms after the target word onset. The influence of proficiency on the matching was nonlinear: proficiency impacted the mapping significantly more in the lower half of the proficiency scale in both experiments. These results are discussed in terms of coactivation of orthographic and phonological information in L2 spoken word recognition.

This study investigates how second language (L2) listeners match an unexpected accented form to their stored form of a word. The phonetic-to-lexical mapping for L2 as compared to L1 regional varieties was examined with early and late Italian-L2 speakers who were all L1-Australian English speakers. AXB discrimination and lexical decision tasks were conducted in both languages, using unfamiliar regional accents that minimize (near-merge) consonant contrasts maintained in their own L1-L2 accents. Results reveal that in the L2, early bilinguals’ recognition of accented variants depended on their discrimination capacity. Late bilinguals, for whom the accented variants were not represented in their L2 lexicon, instead mapped standard and accented exemplars to the same lexical representations (i.e., dual mapping: Samuel & Larraza, 2015). By comparison, both groups showed the same broad accommodation to L1 accented variants. Results suggest qualitatively different yet similarly effective phonetic-to-lexical mapping strategies both for L2 versus L1 regional accents.

We investigated whether speaking in one language affects cross- and within-language activation when subsequently switching to a task performed in the same or different language. English–French bilinguals (L1 English, n = 29; L1 French, n = 28) were randomly assigned to a prior language context condition consisting of a spontaneous production task in English (the no-switch group) or in French (the switch group). Participants then performed an English spoken language comprehension task using the visual world method. The key result was that the switch group showed less evidence of cross-language competition than the no-switch group, consistent with the notion of an active inhibition of a prior language in the switch group. These data suggest that proficient bilinguals can globally suppress a non-target language, whether it is L1 or L2, though doing so requires cognitive resources that may be diverted from other demands, such as controlling within-language competition.

We investigated whether individual differences in inhibitory control relate to bilingual spoken word recognition. While their eye movements were monitored, native English and native French English–French bilinguals listened to English words (e.g., field) and looked at pictures corresponding to the target, a within-language competitor (feet), a French cross-language competitor (fille “girl”), or both, and unrelated filler pictures. We derived cognitive and oculomotor inhibitory control measures from a battery of inhibitory control tasks. Increased cognitive inhibitory control was linked to less within-language competition for all bilinguals, and less cross-language competition for native French low-English-exposure bilinguals. Increased oculomotor inhibitory control was linked to less within-language competition for all native French bilinguals, and less cross-language competition for native French low-English-exposure bilinguals. The results extend previous findings (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2011), and suggest that individual differences in inhibitory control relate to bilingual spoken word processing.

The present study investigated orthographic and phonological processing in L2 French spoken word recognition by Finnish learners of French, using the masked cross-modal priming paradigm. Experiment 1 showed a repetition effect in L2 within-language priming that was most pronounced for high proficiency learners and a significant effect for French pseudohomophones. In the between-language Experiment 2, high proficiency learners showed significant facilitation from L1 Finnish to L2 French shared orthography in the absence of phonological and semantic overlap. This effect was not observed in the lower intermediate group, which showed a significant benefit of L1 pseudohomophones instead. The orthographic effect in the high proficiency group was modulated by subjective familiarity showing facilitation for less familiar but not for highly familiar words. The results suggest that with L2 learners, the extent to which orthographic information affects L2 spoken word recognition depends on their L2 proficiency.