Competition for Production in Bilingual Speech
Open Access
- Author:
- Rymar, Inna
- Area of Honors:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Judith Fran Kroll, Thesis Supervisor
Judith Fran Kroll, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Richard Alan Carlson, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Bilingual Speech
Blocking Effect
Language - Abstract:
- In bilinguals, both languages are always active and competition for retrieval is greater than it is in monolinguals. Though bilinguals have control over their use of language and rarely make mistakes in choosing which language to speak in, competition remains. Language production is a challenging process in and of itself but even more so for bilinguals. A notable difference between monolingual and bilingual speech production is that bilingual speech requires that the speaker choose the language they wish to speak in before articulation. Thus, increased competition is hypothesized to differentially affect the selection process for bilinguals. The current study investigated word production in Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolingual speakers using a simple picture naming task in which pictures were presented in list contexts that were either semantically blocked by category (i.e., all animals or vegetables) or mixed randomly. All participants named the pictures in English. For the monolinguals, this was their first language (L1) but for the Chinese-English bilinguals, this was their second language (L2). Previous studies have shown that picture naming in the context of the semantically blocked categories produces longer naming latencies than picture naming in the context of mixed semantic categories. The hypothesis is that semantically blocked lists increase the presence of competition among the words that are possible picture names. Replicating previous findings, the experiment found that pictures of objects were slower to be named in same-category blocks than in mixed-category contexts. However, the results also revealed larger effects of semantic blocking for the bilinguals in L2 than for the monolinguals in L1. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that lexical retrieval is a competitive process and that competition is greater for bilinguals than for monolinguals because bilinguals are required to juggle the competition across both of their languages even when speaking one language alone.