READING WORDS IN SENTENCE CONTEXT IN THE FIRST OR SECOND LANGUAGE: The effects of semantic constraint and cross-language ambiguity in modulating reading performance
Open Access
- Author:
- Ting, Caitlin Yeh-Shan
- Area of Honors:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Judith Fran Kroll, Thesis Supervisor
Judith Fran Kroll, Thesis Supervisor
Paola Eulalia Dussias, Thesis Supervisor
David A. Rosenbaum, Thesis Honors Advisor
John Lipski, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- sentence processing
bilingualism
constraint effect
cognate facilitation - Abstract:
- The present study investigated lexical processing within sentence context in monolinguals and bilinguals through a series of three experiments. In particular, the study examined the way that a linguistic factor, semantic constraint, modulates the availability of words in each of the bilingual‟s languages. This was examined by comparing the reading of sentences with high and low semantic constraint. For example, in the sentence, “The optometrist measured my eyesight and told me I needed glasses to see better,” the context of the sentence guides the reader to predict the appearance of an instrument that aids poor vision. In contrast, in a sentence such as, “My mother liked everything on the menu but ordered the fish and a side salad,” there is little semantic constraint to guide the reader‟s expectations. Furthermore, the target words in the sentences were either cognates or words that are unambiguously one language alone. In Experiments 1-3, different speaker types (native English monolinguals and non-native speakers of English) were presented with sentences to read. In order to determine whether lexical processing within a sentence interacts with linguistic features, specifically, semantic constraint, critical words and their matched controls were embedded within sentences of either high or low constraint. Previous studies have shown that non-selective lexical access occurs for both monolingual and bilingual speakers. Of particular interest in this research was the cognate facilitation effect which bilinguals have been observed to produce out of context. Moreover, Experiments 1-3 investigated the interaction between semantic constraint and the cognate effect in a manner similar to that of Schwartz and Kroll (2006), who found that the non-selective access normally present in bilinguals, which was observed in the form of the cognate effect, was absent when sentences were highly constrained semantically.