The impacts of language proficiency on cross-language activation in bilingual children

Abstract

The bilingual lexicon contains words from more than one language. Representations from both languages are automatically activated when bilinguals encounter words. However, the degree of cross-language activation varies between individuals, depending on language proficiency. This study investigated the effects of language proficiency and reading ability on bilingual written word recognition. Participants included Grade 6 balanced bilinguals (n = 20) and Grade 5 and 6 unbalanced bilinguals (n = 19). This two-phase study included standardized reading measures and vocabulary tests, followed by a primed lexical decision task. Target words for the lexical decision task consisted of 40 English-French interlingual homographs (i.e., words that are spelled the same between languages but have different meanings). Prime-target pairs consisted of cross-language semantically related (e.g., bedding-LIT, where bed is the meaning of the interlingual homograph LIT in French), or unrelated (e.g., bedding-PAIN). Event related potentials (ERP) and response time (RT) data were analyzed to examine how balanced and unbalanced bilinguals access and integrate lexical information from more than one language. RT and ERP N400 amplitudes revealed that balanced bilinguals experienced facilitation in the related condition, indicating that they were able to integrate representations across languages (e.g., seeing “bedding” in English primed “LIT”, which is related only if cross-language connections are made). In contrast, unbalanced bilinguals showed no differences between related and unrelated primes. Results lend support to the view that bilingual’s languages are automatically activated, while highlighting the important role of language proficiency in bilinguals’ two languages.