Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-08T07:59:19.215Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The gender congruency effect during bilingual spoken-word recognition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2015

LUIS MORALES ,
DANIELA PAOLIERI ,
PAOLA E. DUSSIAS ,
JORGE R. VALDÉS KROFF ,
CHIP GERFEN  and
MARÍA TERESA BAJO
LUIS MORALES*
Affiliation:
Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center; Department of Experimental Psychology; University of Granada, Spain
DANIELA PAOLIERI
Affiliation:
Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center; Department of Experimental Psychology; University of Granada, Spain
PAOLA E. DUSSIAS
Affiliation:
Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese; Penn State University, USA
JORGE R. VALDÉS KROFF
Affiliation:
Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies; University of Florida, USA
CHIP GERFEN
Affiliation:
Department of World Languages & Cultures; American University, USA
MARÍA TERESA BAJO
Affiliation:
Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center; Department of Experimental Psychology; University of Granada, Spain
*
Address for Correspondence: Luis Morales, Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We investigate the ‘gender-congruency’ effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian–Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / ‘find the scarf’) and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects’ name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed.

Keywords

spoken-language comprehensionbilingual lexical accessgrammatical gendervisual world paradigm
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 294 - 310
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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.)

Footnotes

*

This research was supported in part by doctoral research grant from the Andalusian Government (P08-HUM-03600) to Luis Morales; grants EDU2008-01111 and CSD2008-00048 from the Spanish Ministry of Education to Teresa Bajo; grants P07-HUM-02510 and P08-HUM-03600 from the Andalusian Government to Teresa Bajo; grants PSI2013-46033-P from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiviness to Daniela Paolieri; National Science Foundation grant BCS-0821924 to Paola E. Dussias and Chip Gerfen, NSF Grants BCS-0955090 and OISE-0968369 to Paola E. Dussias, NIH Grant 1R21HD071758-01A1 to Paola E. Dussias, and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to Jorge Valdés Kroff.

References

Alameda, J.R., & Cuetos, F. (1995). Diccionario de frecuencias de las unidades lingüísticas del castellano. Oviedo: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Oviedo.Google Scholar
Allopenna, P.D., Magnuson, J.S., & Tanenhaus, M.K. (1998). Tracking the time course of spoken word recognition using eye movements: Evidence for continuous mapping models. Journal of Memory and Language, 38, 419–439.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Devescovi, A., Hernández, A., & Pizzamiglio, L. (1996). Gender priming in Italian. Perception & Psychophysics, 58, 992–1004.Google Scholar
Bertinetto, P.M., Burani, C., Laudanna, A., Marconi, C., Ratti, D., Ronaldo, C., & Thornton, A.M. (2005). CoLFIS (Corpus e Lessico di Frequenza dell'Italiano Scritto) [CoLFIS (Corpus and Frequency Lexicon of Written Italian)]. Available at: http://www.istc.cnr.it/grouppage/colfis [accessed December, 2014].Google Scholar
Blumenfeld, H.K., & Marian, V. (2007). Constraints on parallel activation in bilingual spoken language processing: Examining proficiency and lexical status using eye-tracking. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22, 633–660.Google Scholar
Blumenfeld, H.K., & Marian, V. (2013). Parallel language activation and cognitive control during spoken word recognition in bilinguals. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25, 547–567.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bordag, D., & Pechmann, T. (2007). Factors influencing L2 gender processing. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 299–314.Google Scholar
Bordag, D., & Pechmann, T. (2008). Grammatical gender in translation. Second Language Research, 24, 139–166.Google Scholar
Cantone, K.F., & Müller, N. (2008). Un nase or una nase? What gender marking within switched DPs reveals about the architecture of the bilingual language faculty. Lingua, 118, 810–826.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chambers, C.G., Tanenhaus, M.K., Eberhard, K.M., Filip, H., & Carlson, G.N. (2002). Circumscribing Referential Domains during Real-Time Language Comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 30–49.Google Scholar
Colomé, A. (2001). Lexical activation in bilinguals’ speech production: Language-specific or language-independent? Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 721–736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Corbett, G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Caramazza, A., & Sebástian-Gallés, N. (2000). The cognate facilitation effect: Implications for models of lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1283–1296.Google Scholar
Dahan, D., Swingley, D., Tanenhaus, M.K., & Magnuson, J.S. (2000). Linguistic gender and spoken-word recognition in French. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 465–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Groot, A.M.B. (1993). Word-type effects in bilingual processing tasks: Support for a mixed representational system. In Schreuder, R. & Weltens, B. (Eds.), The bilingual lexicon (pp. 27–51). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Dussias, P.E., Valdés Kroff, J.R, Guzzardo, R.E., & Gerfen, C. (2013). When gender and looking go hand in hand. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 35, 353–387.Google Scholar
Foucart, A., & Frenck-Mestre, C. (2011). Grammatical gender processing in L2: Electrophysiological evidence of the effect of L1–L2 syntactic similarity. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 14, 379–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gollan, T.H., & Frost, R. (2001). Two routes to grammatical gender: Evidence from Hebrew. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 30, 627–651.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Grosjean, F., Dommergues, J., Cornu, E., Guillelmon, D., & Besson, C. (1994). The gender-marking effect in spoken word recognition. Perception & Psychophysics, 56, 590–598.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Guthrie, D., & Buchwald, J.S. (1991). Significance testing of difference potentials. Psychophysiology, 28, 240–244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hopp, H. (2013). Grammatical gender in adult L2 acquisition: Relations between lexical and syntactic variability. Second Language Research, 29, 33–56.Google Scholar
Hoshino, N., & Thierry, G. (2011). Language selection in bilingual word production: Electrophysiological evidence for cross-language competition. Brain Research, 1371, 100–109.Google Scholar
Huettig, F., Rommers, J., & Meyer, A.S. (2011). Using the visual world paradigm to study language processing: A review and critical evaluation. Acta Psychologica, 137, 151–171.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ju, M., & Luce, P.A. (2004). Falling on sensitive ears: Constraints on bilingual lexical activation. Psychological Science, 15, 314–318.Google Scholar
Kroll, J.F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Language and Memory, 33, 149–174.Google Scholar
Kuipers, J.R., & Thierry, G. (2011). N400 amplitude reduction correlates with an increase in pupil size. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5:61.Google Scholar
Kuipers, J.R., & Thierry, G. (2013). ERP-pupil size correlations reveal how bilingualism enhances cognitive flexibility. Cortex, 49, 2853–2860.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lemhöfer, K., Spalek, K., & Schriefers, H. (2008). Cross-language effects of grammatical gender in bilingual word recognition and production. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 312–330.Google Scholar
Levelt, W.J.M., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A.S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 1–75.Google Scholar
Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A. (2007). Young children learning Spanish make rapid use of grammatical gender in spoken word recognition. Psychological Science, 18, 193–198.Google Scholar
Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A. (2010). Real-time processing of gender-marked articles by native and non-native Spanish speakers. Journal of Memory and Language, 63, 447–464.Google Scholar
Lotto, L., Dell'Acqua, R., & Job, R. (2001). Le figure PD/DPSS. Misure di accordosulnome, tipicità, familiarità, età di acquisizione e tempi di denominazione per 266 figure [PD/DPSS pictures: Name agreement, typicality, familiarity, age of acquisition norms and naming times of 266 pictures.]. Giornale Italiano di Psicologia, 28, 231–245.Google Scholar
Macizo, P., & Bajo, M.T. (2006). Reading for repetition and reading for translation: Do they involve the same processes? Cognition, 99, 1–34.Google Scholar
Marian, V., & Spivey, M. (2003a). Bilingual and monolingual processing of competing lexical items. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 173–193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marian, V., & Spivey, M. (2003b). Competing activation in bilingual language processing: Within- and between language competition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 97–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matin, E., Shao, K., & Boff, K. (1993). Saccadic overhead: Information processing time with and without saccades. Perceptual Psychophysics, 53, 372–380.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paolieri, D., Cubelli, R., Macizo, P., Bajo, T., Lotto, L., & Job, R. (2010). Grammatical gender processing in Italian and Spanish bilinguals. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 1631–1645.Google Scholar
Picton, T.W., Bentin, S., Berg, P., Donchin, E., Hillyard, S.A., Johnson, R., Miller, G.A., Ritter, W., Ruchkin, D.S., Rugg, M.D., & Taylor, M.J. (2000). Guidelines for using human event-related potentials to study cognition: recording standards and publication criteria. Psychophysiology, 37, 127–152.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sabourin, L., & Stowe, L. A. (2008). Second language processing: when are first and second languages processed similarly? Second Language Research, 24, 397–430.Google Scholar
Salamoura, A., & Williams, J.N. (2007). The representation of grammatical gender in the bilingual lexicon: Evidence from Greek and German. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10, 257–275.Google Scholar
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-Prime user's guide (Version 1.1). Pittsburg, PA: Psychology Software Tools.Google Scholar
Shook, A., & Marian, V. (2013). The bilingual language interaction network for comprehension of speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, 304–324.Google Scholar
Snodgrass, J.G., & Vanderwart, M. (1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: Norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 6, 174–215.Google ScholarPubMed
Spivey, M.J., & Marian, V. (1999). Cross talk between native and second languages: Partial activation of an irrelevant lexicon. Psychological Science, 10, 281–284.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, M.K., Magnuson, J.S., Dahan, D., & Chambers, C. (2000). Eye movements and lexical access in spoken-language comprehension: Evaluating a linking hypothesis between fixations and linguistic processing. Journal of Psycholinguistics Research, 29, 557–580.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, M.K., Spivey-Knowlton, M.J., Eberhard, K.M., & Sedivy, J.C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information in spoken language comprehension. Science, 268, 1632–1634.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, M.K., Spivey-Knowlton, M.J., Eberhard, K.M., & Sedivy, J.C. (1996). Using eye movements to study spoken language comprehension: Evidence for visually mediated incremental interpretation. In Inui, T. & McClellands, J. (Eds.), Attention & performance XVI: Integration in perception and communication. (pp. 457–478). Cambridge, Massachussets: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Heugten, M., & Johnson, E.K. (2011). Gender-marked determiners help Dutch learners’ word recognition when gender information itself does not. Journal of Child Language, 38, 87–100.Google Scholar
Van Heugten, M., & Shi, R. (2009). French-learning toddlers use gender information on determiners during word recognition. Developmental Science, 12, 419–425.Google Scholar
Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2004). Lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 1–25.Google Scholar
Weber, A., & Paris, G. (2004). The origin of the linguistic gender effect in spoken-word recognition: Evidence from non-native listening. Proceedings of the Twenty-Sixth Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 1446–1451.Google Scholar
Wicha, N.Y.Y., Moreno, E.M., & Kutas, M. (2004). Anticipating words and their gender: An event-related brain potential study of semantic integration, gender expectancy, and gender agreement in Spanish sentence reading. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 1272–1288.Google Scholar