Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T06:04:45.070Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Visual word recognition in a second language: A test of the lexical entrenchment hypothesis with lexical decision times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

MARC BRYSBAERT ,
EVELYNE LAGROU  and
MICHAËL STEVENS
MARC BRYSBAERT*
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Belgium
EVELYNE LAGROU
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Belgium
MICHAËL STEVENS
Affiliation:
Ghent University, Belgium
*
Address for correspondence: Marc Brysbaert, Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, B-9000 Gent, Belgium, marc.brysbaert@ugent.be
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The word frequency effect is stronger in second language (L2) processing than in first language (L1) processing. According to the lexical entrenchment hypothesis, this difference is not due to a qualitative difference in word processing between L1 and L2, but can be explained by differences in exposure to the target language: People with less exposure to a language show a steeper frequency curve for that language. Exposure differences can be measured with a vocabulary test. The present study tested whether the lexical entrenchment hypothesis provides an adequate explanation for differences in lexical decision times. To this end, we compared the performance of 56 Dutch–English bilinguals to that of 1011 English L1 speakers on 420 English six-letter words. In line with previous research, the differences in the word frequency effect between word processing in L1 and in L2 became vanishingly small once vocabulary size was entered as a predictor. Only in a diffusion model analysis did we find some evidence that the information build-up may be slower in L1 than in L2, independent of vocabulary size. We further report effects of cognates, age-of-acquisition, and neighborhood size that can also be explained in terms of differences in exposure.

Keywords

bilingualismword recognitionmasked priminglexical decisionlexical entrenchmentdiffusion model
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , May 2017 , pp. 530 - 548
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adelman, J. S., Johnson, R. L., McCormick, S. F., McKague, M., Kinoshita, S., Bowers, J. S., Perry, J. R., Lupker, S. J., Forster, K. I., Cortese, M. J., Scaltritti, M., Aschenbrenner, A. J., Coane, J. H., White, L., Yap, M. J., Davis, C., Kim, J., & Davis, C. J. (2014). A behavioral database for masked form priming. Behavior Research Methods, 46 (4), 1052–1067.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Altarriba, J., & Isurin, L. (Eds.) (2014). Memory, Language, and Bilingualism: Theoretical and Applied Approaches. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Andrews, S. (1997). The effect of orthographic similarity on lexical retrieval: Resolving neighborhood conflicts. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4 (4), 439–461.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrews, S., & Hersch, J. (2010). Lexical precision in skilled readers: Individual differences in masked neighbor priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 139 (2), 299–318.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & Gulikers, L. (1995). The CELEX Lexical Database (CD-ROM). Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 1995.Google Scholar
Balota, D. A., Yap, M. J., Hutchison, K. A., Cortese, M. J., Kessler, B., Loftis Neely, J. H., Nelson, D. L., Simpson, G. B., & Treiman, R. (2007). The English lexicon project. Behavior Research Methods, 39 (3), 445–459.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brysbaert, M., & Dijkstra, T. (2006). Changing views on word recognition in bilinguals. In Morais, J. & d'Ydewalle, G. (Eds.), Bilingualism and second language acquisition. Brussels: KVAB.Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M., & Duyck, W. (2010). Is it time to leave behind the revised hierarchical model of bilingual language processing after 15 years of service? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 359–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brysbaert, M., & Ellis, A.W. (In press). Aphasia and age-of-acquisition: Are early-learned words more resilient? Aphasiology.Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M., Van Wijnendaele, I., & De Deyne, S. (2000). Age-of-acquisition effects in semantic processing tasks. Acta Psychologica, 104, 215–226.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bultena, S., Dijkstra, T., & van Hell, J. G. (2014). Cognate effects in sentence context depend on word class, L2 proficiency, and task. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67 (6), 1214–1241.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carreiras, M., Perea, M., & Grainger, J. (1997). Effects of the orthographic neighborhood in visual word recognition: Cross-task comparisons. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23 (4), 857.Google ScholarPubMed
Cop, U., Keuleers, E., Drieghe, D., & Duyck, W. (2015). Frequency Effects in Monolingual and Bilingual Natural Reading. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 20, 963–972.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Caramazza, A., & Sebastian-Galles, N. (2000). The cognate facilitation effect: Implications for models of lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26 (5), 1283–1296.Google ScholarPubMed
Cunningham, A. E., & Stanovich, K. E. (2001). What reading does for the mind. Journal of Direct Instruction, 1, 137–149.Google Scholar
Davis, C. J. (2010). The spatial coding model of visual word identification. Psychological Review, 117 (3), 713–758.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davis, C. J., & Lupker, S. J. (2006). Masked inhibitory priming in English: Evidence for lexical inhibition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 32, 668–687.Google ScholarPubMed
de Groot, A.M.B. (2010). Language and Cognition in Bilinguals and Multilinguals: An Introduction. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
de Groot, A. M. B., Borgwaldt, S., Bos, M., & van den Eijnden, E. (2002). Lexical decision and word naming in bilinguals: Language effects and task effects. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 91–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Moor, W., Verguts, T., & Brysbaert, M. (2005). Testing the “multiple” in the multiple read-out model of visual word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 1502–1508.Google ScholarPubMed
Diependaele, K., Lemhöfer, K., & Brysbaert, M. (2013). The word frequency effect in first and second language word recognition: A lexical entrenchment account. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66, 843–863.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dijkstra, T., Timmermans, M., & Schriefers, H. (2000). On being blinded by your other language: Effects of task demands on interlingual homograph recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 445–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dufau, S., Grainger, J., & Ziegler, J. C. (2012). How to say “no” to a nonword: A leaky competing accumulator model of lexical decision. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38 (4), 1117.Google Scholar
Dutilh, G., Vandekerckhove, J., Forstmann, B.U., Keuleers, E., Brysbaert, M., & Wagenmakers, E.J. (2012). Testing theories of post–error slowing. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 454–465.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duyck, W., Vanderelst, D., Desmet, T., & Hartsuiker, R.J. (2008). The frequency effect in second-language visual word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15 (4), 850–855.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Duyck, W., Van Assche, E., Drieghe, D., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2007). Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: evidence for nonselective lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33 (4), 663–679.Google Scholar
Ferrand, L., Brysbaert, M., Keuleers, E., New, B., Bonin, P., Meot, A., Augustinova, M., & Pallier, C. (2011). Comparing word processing times in naming, lexical decision, and progressive demasking: evidence from Chronolex. Frontiers in Psychology, 2:306. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00306.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferrand, L., New, B., Brysbaert, M., Keuleers, E., Bonin, P., Meot, A., Augustinova, M., & Pallier, C. (2010). The French Lexicon Project: Lexical decision data for 38,840 French words and 38,840 pseudowords. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 488–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gomez, P., & Perea, M. (2014). Decomposing encoding and decisional components in visual-word recognition: A diffusion model analysis. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 2455–2466.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grainger, J., & Jacobs, A. M. (1996). Orthographic processing in visual word recognition: a multiple read-out model. Psychological Review, 103 (3), 518–565.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Harrell, F. E. Jr., (2001). Regression modeling strategies. Berlin, Germany: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heredia, R., & Altarriba, J. (Eds.) (2014). Foundations of bilingual memory. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hubert, M., & Vandervieren, E. (2008). An adjusted boxplot for skewed distributions. Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, 52, 5186–5201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Haight, W., Bryk, A., Seltzer, M., & Lyons, T. (1991). Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27 (2), 236–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izura, C., & Ellis, A. W. (2002). Age of acquisition effects in word recognition and production in first and second languages. Psicológica, 23 (2), 245–282.Google Scholar
Jin, Z. (2013). Nonselective access of English phonology in bi-scriptal Chinese–Korean visual word recognition. Cognitive Processing, 14 (4), 435–441.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, P. C. D. (2014). Extension of Nakagawa & Schielzeth's R2 GLMM to random slopes models. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 5, 944–946.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keuleers, E., Diependaele, K., & Brysbaert, M. (2010). Practice effects in large-scale visual word recognition studies: A lexical decision study on 14,000 Dutch mono- and disyllabic words and nonwords. Frontiers in Psychology 1, 174. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00174 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keuleers, E., Lacey, P., Rastle, K., & Brysbaert, M. (2012). The British Lexicon Project: Lexical decision data for 28,730 monosyllabic and disyllabic English words. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 287–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keuleers, E., Stevens, M., Mandera, P., & Brysbaert, M. (2015). Word knowledge in the crowd: Measuring vocabulary size and word prevalence in a massive online experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68 (8), 1665–1692.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C., & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9 (02), 119–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33 (2), 149–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuperman, V., Stadthagen-Gonzalez, H., & Brysbaert, M. (2012). Age-of-acquisition ratings for 30 thousand English words. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 978–990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuperman, V., & Van Dyke, J. A. (2013). Reassessing word frequency as a determinant of word recognition for skilled and unskilled readers. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 39 (3), 802–823.Google ScholarPubMed
Laszlo, S., & Federmeier, K. D. (2011). The N400 as a snapshot of interactive processing: Evidence from regression analyses of orthographic neighbor and lexical associate effects. Psychophysiology, 48 (2), 176–186.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lemhöfer, K., & Broersma, M. (2012). Introducing LexTALE: A quick and valid Lexical Test for Advanced Learners of English. Behavior Research Methods, 44, 325–343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lemhöfer, K., Dijkstra, T., Schriefers, H., Baayen, R. H., Grainger, J., & Zwisterlood, P. (2008). Native language influences on word recognition in a second language: A megastudy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 34, 12–31.Google Scholar
Massol, S., Grainger, J., Dufau, S., & Holcomb, P. (2010). Masked priming from orthographic neighbors: An ERP investigation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36 (1), 162–174.Google ScholarPubMed
Monaghan, P., & Ellis, A. W. (2010). Modeling reading development: Cumulative, incremental learning in a computational model of word naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 63 (4), 506–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers-Scotton, C. (2006). Multiple voices: An introduction to bilingualism. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Ploetz, D. M., & Yates, M. (In press). Age of acquisition and imageability: A cross-task comparison. Journal of Research in Reading.Google Scholar
Ratcliff, R. (1978). A theory of memory retrieval. Psychological Review, 85, 59–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ratcliff, R., Gomez, P., & McKoon, G. (2004). A diffusion model account of the lexical decision task. Psychological Review, 111 (1), 159.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schepens, J., Dijkstra, T., & Grootjen, F. (2012). Distributions of cognates in Europe as based on Levenshtein distance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15 (01), 157–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segui, J., & Grainger, J. (1990). Priming word recognition with orthographic neighbors: Effects of relative prime-target frequency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 16 (1), 65–76.Google ScholarPubMed
Shipley, W. C. (1940). A self-administering scale for measuring intellectual impairment and deterioration. The Journal of Psychology, 9, 371–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shrout, P. E., & Fleiss, J. L. (1979). Intraclass correlations: uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychological Bulletin, 86 (2), 420–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tokowicz, N. (2014). Lexical processing and second language acquisition. Oxford, UK: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Heuven, W. J. B., Dijkstra, T., & Grainger, J. (1998). Orthographic Neighborhood Effects in Bilingual Word Recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 39 (3), 458–483.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Heuven, W.J.B., Mandera, P., Keuleers, E., & Brysbaert, M. (2014). Subtlex-UK: A new and improved word frequency database for British English. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67, 1176–1190.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Wijnendaele, I., & Brysbaert, M. (2002). Visual word recognition in bilinguals: Phonological priming from the second to the first language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 28, 616–627.Google Scholar
Voss, A., & Voss, J. (2007). Fast-dm: A free program for efficient diffusion model analysis. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 767–775.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whitford, V., & Titone, D. (2012). Second-language experience modulates first-and second-language word frequency effects: Evidence from eye movement measures of natural paragraph reading. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19 (1), 73–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yap, M. J., Balota, D. A., Sibley, D. E., & Ratcliff, R. (2012). Individual differences in visual word recognition: Insights from the English Lexicon Project. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 38 (1), 53–79.Google ScholarPubMed