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A time course analysis of interlingual homograph processing: Evidence from eye movements*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2015

LIV J. HOVERSTEN  and
MATTHEW J. TRAXLER
LIV J. HOVERSTEN
Affiliation:
Center for Mind and Brain, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis
MATTHEW J. TRAXLER*
Affiliation:
Center for Mind and Brain, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis
*
Address for Correspondence: Matt Traxler Department of Psychology, UC Davis 1 Shields Avenue Davis, CA 95616[email protected]
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Abstract

We recorded eye movements during natural reading to explore the influence of sentence context on bilingual word recognition. English monolinguals and Spanish–English bilinguals read sentences in English that biased either the English or the Spanish meaning of interlingual homographs. Shortly after encountering the homograph, the groups showed equivalent implausibility effects when its English meaning was incongruent with the preceding sentence context. No evidence for immediate homograph interference emerged during this period in the bilingual group. Only in later processing measures did group and congruency interact. Bilinguals may have initially accessed and selected the language appropriate meaning of the homograph to integrate into the sentence. Later, bilinguals accessed their first language lexicon and integrated the Spanish meaning into the sentence when semantically appropriate. Rather than always experiencing cross-language competition, proficient bilinguals may dynamically adapt to contextual cues and selectively access information associated with the contextually cued language under certain conditions.

Keywords

bilingualismlexical accesseye trackingsentence processinginterlingual homographs
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 347 - 360
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

The authors thank David Beard and Rocio Del Razo for assistance in developing the stimuli. This project was supported by awards from the National Science Foundation (#SBE-0541953; 1024003), the National Institutes of Health (MH099327, HD073948), and the UC Davis Office of Outreach and International Programs.

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