When Two Languages Compete: Evidence for Cross-language Activation in Bilingual Production

1. When Two Languages Compete: Evidence for Cross-language Activation in Bilingual Production Judith F. Kroll Department of Psychology Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802 USA

2. Acknowledgments Collaborators: • Teresa Bajo • Susan Bobb • Kate Cheng • Ingrid Christoffels • Dorothee Chwilla • Albert Costa • Annette De Groot • Franziska Dietz • Ton Dijkstra • Giuli Dussias • Chip Gerfen • Tamar Gollan • David Green • Noriko Hoshino • April Jacobs • Niels Janssen • Debra Jared • Jared Linck • Pedro Macizo • Erica Michael • Natasha Miller • Maya Misra • Scott Payne • Pilar Piñar • Carmen Ruiz • Nuria Sagarra • Mikel Santesteban • Herbert Schriefers • Ana Schwartz • Bianca Sumutka • Gretchen Sunderman • Natasha Tokowicz • Janet Van Hell • Zofia Wodniecka Research Support: • National Science Foundation Grants, BCS-0111734 and BCS-0418071 • NIH Grant RO1MH62479 • RGSO Grant, Penn State University • Language Science Research Group at Penn State University

3. Cognitive research on bilingualism has increased dramatically in the past 10-15 years • Experimental psycholinguistics contributes one approach to understanding the nature of bilingual experience • Bilinguals provide a model for cognitive scientists interested in developing a universal account of how cognitive systems develop and interact with one another • In this talk I focus on behavioral research methods that complement linguistic analyses and neuroimaging to illustrate this approach

4. Amsterdam, Centraal Station

5. Dutch-English speaker “bike” “fiets”

6. Talk Outline • Spoken production as a case to illustrate the logic of cognitive approaches to bilingualism • What evidence suggests that both languages are active when even a single word is spoken? • How deep into speech planning does that activation extend? • How is the activity of the two languages resolved? • Cues to language status • Inhibition • Questions for ongoing research

7. Dutch-English speaker “bike” “fiets”

8. How does a speaker of two languages select the words to produce? • Selective access: The intention to speak in one language determines which candidates become active • The two languages are functionally separate • Non-selective access: Candidates in both languages • become active in parallel and may compete for selection • Distinct cues to language membership may eventually bias access for candidates in the intended language or allow those in the unintended language to be inhibited

9. Selective access: Functional separation Dutch-English speaker “fiets”

10. Non-selective access: Parallel activation and later selection Dutch-English speaker “bike” “fiets”

11. Past bilingual production experiments converge on the conclusion of nonselective access but come to different conclusions regarding the locus of selection. Some argue that selection occurs at the level of the lemma or abstract lexical representation whereas other studies suggest that cross-language competition extends to the phonology Nonselective to the phonology Nonselective to the lemma level

12. If highly proficient bilinguals cannot select the language they intend to speak in advance, then the problem becomes even more cognitively challenging for second language learners and unbalanced bilinguals for whom the first language is far more dominant and active than the second.

13. Spoken production as a case to illustrate the logic of cognitive approaches to bilingualism • What evidence suggests that both languages are active when even a single word is spoken? • How deep into speech planning does that activation extend? • How is the activity of the two languages resolved? • Cues to language status • Inhibition • Questions for ongoing research

14. Psycholinguistic Tools: Three Laboratory Production Tasks “fiets” picture naming word translation bike “fiets” word naming fiets “fiets”

15. Exploit a classic interference task: Stroop (1935): Name the color of the ink: GREEN: “green” GREEN: “red” XXXXX: “blue”

16. Variations of the Stroop Task Interference in picture naming coche How does the language of the distractor word affect the presence of semantic interference? If production is language selective, then only distractors in the language to be spoken should produce interference.

17. Semantic interference does not depend on the language of the distractor! * * Data from Costa & Caramazza (2000) for Spanish-English bilinguals naming pictures in Spanish (L1) with distractors in Spanish (L1) and in English (L2)

18. Another approach: Effects of language mixture: If language production is fundamentally selective, then requiring both languages to be active should disrupt picture naming performance Cued Picture Naming: Language of naming depends on an auditory cue (Kroll, Dijkstra, Janssen, & Schriefers, in preparation)

19. Logic of Cued Picture Naming: Mixed conditions: Name the picture in English if you hear the high tone and in Dutch if you hear the low tone Force activation of both languages Blocked conditions: Name the picture in English (or Dutch) if you hear the high tone and say “no” if you hear the low tone Activation of the nontarget language is optional

20. Cost of Language Mixing in Cued Picture Naming: Dutch-English Bilinguals (Kroll et al., in preparation) These results suggest that L1 is normally active during lexicalization into the L2. Requiring L1 to be active does not affect L2 picture naming performance. The cost to L1 resembles the effects of language switching on L1.

21. Miller (2001): What happens to picture naming when the language of a probe word naming task is in the L1 or L2? ? “frog” 1. frog 2. “frog” 3. kikker “kikker”

22. Same basic result: Little effect on L2 when L1 is required to be used; performance appears nonselective in both cases. For L1, there is a significant cost when L2 is required to be active

24. Spoken production as a case to illustrate the logic of cognitive approaches to bilingualism • What evidence suggests that both languages are active when even a single word is spoken? • How deep into speech planning does that activation extend? • How is the activity of the two languages resolved? • Cues to language status • Inhibition • Questions for ongoing research

25. How far into speech planning does parallel activation extend? cognate status of the picture’s name • An indication of the level at which the nontarget alternative is active • If the phonology of the target alternative is available, then we might predict facilitation in picture naming due to the overlap across languages

26. Simple picture naming in L2 and by monolinguals: Costa, Caramazza, & Sebastián-Gallés (2000) cognate facilitation Bilinguals: Catalan-Spanish speakers naming in Spanish (L2) Monolinguals: Native Spanish speakers naming in Spanish (L1) Cognate facilitation suggests that the other language is active to the level of the phonology

27. Effect of Cognate Status in Cued Picture Naming: Dutch-English Bilinguals (Kroll et al., in preparation) Magnitude of cognate facilitation in naming pictures in the L2 under mixed and blocked language conditions. For L2 there is very little consequence of whether language is mixed

28. Spoken production as a case to illustrate the logic of cognitive approaches to bilingualism • What evidence suggests that both languages are active when even a single word is spoken? • How deep into speech planning does that activation extend? • How is the activity of the two languages resolved? • Cues to language status • Inhibition • Questions for ongoing research

29. The results for naming cognate pictures suggest that the activity of the nontarget language reaches the level of the phonology. But can bilinguals exploit language cues in the nature of the event that initiates production to minimize cross-language influences? More likely to be a a fiets than a bike? Even more likely to be a fiets? Definitely Dutch!

31. Bringing the problem into the lab… Compare translation to picture naming: In translation there is a cue to the language present in the nature of the input picture naming “fiets” “fiets” bike word translation don’t speak English!

32. Miller & Kroll (2002): Translation Stroop: What happens when the distractor is in the language of the input? English Spanish If there is a cue in the event that initiates speech planning, then a distractor in the input language should not influence production.

33. Stroop interference in translation only when the distractor appeared in the language of the word to be spoken, unlike the Stroop interference observed for picture naming A cue in the language input allowed production to proceed selectively!

34. Does the language of a sentence context function as a cue? Schwartz (2003): Take words that have been shown to elicit activation of both languages and put them in full sentence context. Cognates with identical/similar orthography but similar or different phonology: Out of context: Facilitation for naming cognates in L2 when the phonology converges from L1 to L2

35. + The boy ran home for Who ran home? home dinner. RSVP: Method for naming words in sentence context (250ms/word) time Follow along with sentence. Say red word out loud. Answer questions when asked. RSVP: Rapid Serial Visual Presentation

36. Schwartz (2003): Does the facilitation for naming cognates disappear in sentence context? If the sentence provides a cue to language membership, then no cognate effects should be observed High Low Result: Sentence constraint but not language per se eliminates the cognate effect Naming in the L2

37. What cues effectively reduce cross-language competition? • Language-specific information in the event that initiates speech planning (Miller & Kroll, 2002) • Convergence between language-specific information and meaning (Schwartz, 2003, Van Hell, 1998) • What cues do notreduce cross-language competition? • The language of a sentence context itself (Schwartz, 2003; Van Hell, 1998) • The intention to use one language only (Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002) • Instructions (Dijkstra et al., 2000) • Cross-language script differences (Hoshino & Kroll, 2005)

38. Spoken production as a case to illustrate the logic of cognitive approaches to bilingualism • What evidence suggests that both languages are active when even a single word is spoken? • How deep into speech planning does that activation extend? • How is the activity of the two languages resolved? • Cues to language status • Inhibition • Questions for ongoing research

39. Inhibition: Do bilinguals inhibit one language to speak the other? Some recent research suggests not: Costa & Santesteban (2004): Highly balanced Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Barcelona do not appear to require inhibition when switching between languages

40. Three laboratory approaches to examine how inhibition may operate when L2 speakers are immersed in the L2 • Simulated immersion in the lab • Actual immersion in an L2 environment • Forced L2 immersion within the L1 environment

41. Simulated immersion in the laboratory Kroll, Michael, & Sankaranarayanan (1998): Attempted to simulate one aspect of an immersion environment in a training study in the laboratory by providing unique cues to the L2. What’s helpful about immersion?  Suppression of L1  Unique cues to L2 Teach American college students who know no Dutch or German 40 new Dutch words by associating them to their English translations or to pictures of the objects to which they refer.

42. Training conditions for monolingual English speakers:

43. The twist: The pictures were sometimes shown in a noncanonical orientation • The noncanonical • orientation may: 1. Provide a unique cue to the L2 word and/or 2. Inhibit the process of retrieving the L1 name ?

44. At test: Translate words from English to Dutch or name pictures in Dutch. There is typically a cost to naming pictures of noncanonical objects. The question here is whether that cost will be observed for learners who acquired the new L2 concepts by associating them to the noncanonical objects.

45. What is the cost of noncanonicality at test? [noncanonical-normal orientation] This is the remarkable result: Faster to later translate from English to Dutch if trained on the noncanonical pictures!

46. Real L2 immersion during study abroad: Linck & Kroll (2005) Native English speakers at intermediate levels of Spanish spending a semester abroad in Salamanca compared to a control group of classroom learners with comparable L2 study Performed a translation recognition task (De Groot, 1992; Sunderman, 2002) in which they had to decide whether a word in English was the correct translation of a word in Spanish. hombre man ? “yes”

47. Using materials from Sunderman (2002), the critical distractors in the experiment consisted of word pairs that were not the correct translation: mano-man: lexical form related hambre-man: translation related mujer-man: semantically related Critical items: Control items: casa-man: unrelated [Interference = Critical RT - Control RT]

48. Results: Control learners show interference for all distractor types but immersed learners show only semantic interference In the immersion environment the L1 appears to be suppressed!

49. Forced immersion in an L1 environment: Jacobs, Gerfen, & Kroll (2005) Native English speakers at intermediate levels of Spanish in a summer domestic immersion program or in classroom study only. The two groups appear similar in overall proficiency in Spanish as the L2: Self-assessed proficiency in L1 and L2 (10 pt. Scale): Classroom: L1 = 9.6 L2 = 6.3 Immersed: L1 = 9.3 L2 = 6.1 Percent correct rejections in Spanish lexical decision (is the string of letters a real word in Spanish?) Classroom: 65.9% Immersed: 68.7%

50. Two groups performed a Spanish word naming experiment with cognates and lexically/phonetically matched controls Naming Latencies VOT Articulatory Duration Immersed learners are faster to name Spanish words and like proficient English speakers of Spanish, speak Spanish words as more Spanish-like than the classroom learners and show effects of cross-language cognate status in planning but not executing L2 speech. Again, in this immersion environment it appears that L1 is suppressed!