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The impact of individual differences on cross-language activation of meaning by phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2019

Deanna C. Friesen Open the ORCID record for Deanna C. Friesen [Opens in a new window] ,
Veronica Whitford ,
Debra Titone  and
Debra Jared
Deanna C. Friesen*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario
Veronica Whitford
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Brain and Mind Institute, University of Western Ontario
Debra Titone
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Centre for Research on Brain, Language and Music, McGill University
Debra Jared
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Western Ontario
*
Address for correspondence: Deanna C. Friesen, Email: Deanna.Friesen@uwo.ca
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Abstract

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.

Keywords

bilingualismeye movementsreadingphonologysemanticssentence processing
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , March 2020 , pp. 323 - 343
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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