Processing costs while bilinguals read Spanish-english code switches: An eye tracking study
Open Access
- Author:
- Theberge, Marie-christine
- Area of Honors:
- Spanish
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Paola Eulalia Dussias, Thesis Supervisor
John Lipski, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- code-switching
eye tracking
Spanish-English bilinguals
reading comprehension
PDC Model - Abstract:
- The ability of a speaker to switch from one language to another, often several times in a single utterance, is referred to as code-switching. Code-switches can occur inter-sententially, between sentences (e.g., My sister arrived. Ya podemos empezar a comer/My sister arrived. We can start eating now), or intra-sententially, within one single sentence (e.g., Mi amiga dijo que her sister va a tomar several science courses este semestre/My friend said that her sister will take several science courses this semester). One might imagine that switching back and forth between two languages, especially intra-sententially, where we can see an interaction of the two grammatical systems, would be very difficult; yet we see bilingual speakers code-switch seamlessly, without pauses or hesitation, suggesting that the use of two languages is a natural process. Although a very common occurrence among bilinguals, code-switching has been a largely unexplored area of study from a psycholinguistic perspective, and particularly from the perspective of the language comprehender. To fill this gap in the literature, this study examines whether there are processing costs incurred while Spanish-English bilinguals read code-switched sentences. Code- switching is thought to occur mostly in speech, but it has also permeated written texts, especially more informal correspondence, such as email and text messages. During production (i.e., while speaking or writing), bilingual speakers are in control of where a code-switch will occur. However, for the bilingual listener or reader, code-switches might be unexpected and thus potentially difficult to process. Using eye-tracking technology, bilinguals’ eye moments were while they read different types of intra-sentential code-switches, and analyses consisted of comparing the time taken to read different conditions. Longer reading times are normally associated with some type of processing cost. Results show that switches that are produced more frequently in bilingual speech are also easier for readers to comprehend. This finding is the first type of evidence in the code-switching literature showing a link between production and comprehension. It is significant because it is in line with current theories of monolingual sentence processing that emphasize the close relationship between comprehension and production (Gennari & MacDonald, 2009). As such, these findings add crucial data to our understanding of the architecture underlying human language processing.