Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
805877310
Author
Friesen, Deanna C.(Deanna Christine)
Title
Semantic activation in bilingual visual word recognition.
Degree
Ph. D. -- University of Western Ontario, 2010
Publisher
Ottawa : Library and Archives Canada = Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, [2012]
Description
3 microfiches
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
The present dissertation investigated whether bilinguals activate semantic representations from both languages when reading in a single language. In Study 1, both French-English and English-French bilinguals performed an English lexical decision task, wherein interlingual homographs (i.e., words that share orthography but not meaning across languages, e.g., pain means ''bread'' in French) served as either translation- (e.g., pain-bread) or associative- (e.g., pain-butter) primes. When the target words were in bilinguals' non-dominant language, significant translation priming was observed. In contrast, neither associative priming in either language nor translation priming when target words were in participants' dominant language were observed. In Study 2, a category verification task asked bilinguals to decide whether interlingual homophones (i.e., words that share pronunciations across languages, but not orthography or meaning, e.g., shoe) and their control words (e.g., silk) were members of a category (e.g., a type of vegetable). If bilinguals activate phonological and semantic representations from both languages, then more errors and longer response times should be observed on homophones as compared to control words, since the unpresented members of the homophone pairs (e.g., chou means cabbage in French) were members of the categories. Bilinguals exhibited homophone interference. However, the nature of effect depended on the language of the task, the proficiency of the bilinguals in their non-dominant language and the relative word frequency of the homophone pairs. In Study 3, language non-selective semantic activation in a sentence context was investigated. English-French bilinguals read English sentences that either included appropriate English homophones (e.g., Gary was appalled to see his shoe was missing a lace), their French homophone foils (e.g., chou) or French spelling control words (e.g., cloche). If bilinguals activate the English meaning (e.g., "footwear") from the French homophone foil (e.g., chou), then word reading latencies for French homophone foils should differ from those for French control words. The presence of language non-selective semantic activation depended on the frequency of French homophone foils. This research provides evidence for language non-selectivity at the level of semantic representations and outlines the conditions under which it occurs. Implications are discussed in relation to theories of bilingual word recognition.
ISBN
9780494734445
0494734442