Effects of Code-switching on Sentence Comprehension in Highly Proficient Spanish-english Bilinguals
Open Access
Author:
Simon, Michelle Faith
Area of Honors:
Spanish
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Paola Eulalia Dussias, Thesis Supervisor John Lipski, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Bilingual Code-Switching
Abstract:
This research looked at how Spanish-English bilinguals remember the meaning of sentences they read. Past research with monolingual participants suggested that meaning was retained, but the form was not stored. However, few studies have used bilinguals to study the same topic, which makes this research beneficial to the linguistics field. This study uses Spanish-English code-switched sentences to test comprehension and memory. Before researching, it was predicted that participants would score more accurately when the question content and language were matched to the sentence. However, the results demonstrated that there was no effect for language matching; participants scored just as accurately regardless of question and sentence language matching. The results also showed that reaction times were faster for L1 than for L2.
