Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T16:14:07.768Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assessing the presence of lexical competition across languages: Evidence from the Stroop task*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

ALBERT COSTA ,
BÁRBARA ALBAREDA  and
MIKEL SANTESTEBAN
ALBERT COSTA*
Affiliation:
GRNC, Parc Científic de Barcelona & Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona
BÁRBARA ALBAREDA
Affiliation:
GRNC, Parc Científic de Barcelona & Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona
MIKEL SANTESTEBAN
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
Address for correspondence: Albert Costa, Dept. Psicologia Basica, Universitat de Barcelona, P. Vall d'Hebron, 171 08035 Barcelona, Spainacosta@ub.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Do the lexical representations of the non-response language enter into lexical competition during speech production? This issue has been studied by means of the picture–word interference paradigm in which two paradoxical effects have been observed. The so-called CROSS-LANGUAGE IDENTITY EFFECT (Costa, Miozzo and Caramazza, 1999) has been taken as evidence against cross-linguistic lexical competition. In contrast, the so-called PHONO-TRANSLATION EFFECT (Hermans, Bongaerts, De Bot and Schreuder, 1998) has been interpreted as revealing lexical competition across languages. In this article, we assess the reliability of these two effects by testing Spanish–Catalan highly-proficient bilinguals performing a Stroop task. The results of the experiment are clear: while the cross-language identity facilitation effect is reliably replicated, the phono-translation interference effect is absent from the Stroop task. From these results, we conclude that we should be cautious when drawing strong conclusions about the presence of competition across languages based on the phono-translation effect observed in the picture–word interference paradigm.

Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 121 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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 by a grant from the Spanish Government (SEJ-2005), a grant from the European Science Foundation (BFF2002-10379-E), by the McDonnell grant “Bridging Mind Brain and Behavior”. Requests for reprints should be addressed to Albert Costa. The authors are grateful to Ms Ivanova and Dr Hermans for their comments on previous versions of this manuscript.

References

Caramazza, A. & Costa, A. 2000. The semantic interference effect in the picture–word interference paradigm: Does the response set matter? Cognition, 75 (2), B51–B64.Google Scholar
Caramazza, A. & Costa, A. 2001. Set size and repetition in the picture–word interference paradigm: Implications for models of naming. Cognition, 80 (3), 291–298.Google Scholar
Chen, H.-C. & Ho, C. 1986. Development of Stroop interference in Chinese–English bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 12 (3), 397–401.Google Scholar
Costa, A. 2005. Lexical access in bilingual production. In Kroll & de Groot (eds.), pp. 308–325.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Alario, F.-X. & Caramazza, A. 2005. On the categorical nature of the semantic interference effect in the picture–word interference paradigm. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12 (1), 125–131.Google Scholar
Costa, A. & Caramazza, A. 1999. Is lexical selection in bilingual speech production language-specific? Further evidence from Spanish–English and English–Spanish bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2 (3), 231–244.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Colomé, A., Gómez, O. & Sebastián-Gallés, N. 2003. Another look at cross-language competition in bilingual speech production: Lexical and phonological factors. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6 (3), 167–179.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Ivanova, I. & Santesteban, M. 2006a. How do highly proficient bilinguals control their lexicalization process? Inhibitory and language-specific selection mechanisms are both functional. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32 (5), 1057–1074.Google ScholarPubMed
Costa, A., La Heij, W. & Navarrete, E. 2006b. The dynamics of bilingual lexical access. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9 (2), 137–151.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Miozzo, M. & Caramazza, A. 1999. Lexical selection in bilinguals: Do words in the bilingual's two lexicons compete for selection? Journal of Memory and Language, 41 (3), 365–397.Google Scholar
Ehri, L. C. & Ryan, E. B. 1980. Performance of bilinguals in a picture–word interference task. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 9 (3), 285–302.Google Scholar
Finkbeiner, M., Gollan, T. H. & Caramazza, A. 2006. Lexical access in bilingual speakers: Whats the (hard) problem? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9 (2), 153–166.Google Scholar
Glaser, W. R. & Glaser, M. O. 1989. Context effects on Stroop-like word and picture processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 118 (1), 13–42.Google Scholar
Goodman, G. S., Haith, M. M., Guttentag, R. E. & Rao, S. 1985. Automatic processing of word meaning: Intralingual and interlingual interference. Child Development, 56, 103–118.Google Scholar
Green, D. W. 1998. Mental control of the bilingual lexico-semantic system. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1 (2), 67–81.Google Scholar
Hermans, D. 2004. Between-language identity effects in picture–word interference tasks: A challenge for language-nonspecific or language-specific models of lexical access? International Journal of Bilingualism, 8 (2), 115–125.Google Scholar
Hermans, D., Bongaerts, T., de Bot, K. & Schreuder, R. 1998. Producing words in a foreign language: Can speakers prevent interference from their first language? Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1 (3), 213–230.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S. C. & Wodniecka, Z. 2006. Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9 (2), 119–135.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F. & de Groot, A. M. B. (eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
La Heij, W. 1988. Components of Stroop-like interference in picture naming. Memory and Cognition, 16, 400–410.Google Scholar
La Heij, W. 2005. Monolingual and bilingual lexical access in speech production: issues and models. In Kroll & de Groot (eds.), pp. 289–307.Google Scholar
La Heij, W. & van den Hof, E. 1995. Picture–word interference increases with target- set size. Psychological Research, 58 (2), 119–133.Google Scholar
Lee, M. W. & Williams, J. 2001. Lexical access in spoken word production by bilinguals: Evidence from a semantic priming paradigm. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4 (3), 233–248.Google Scholar
Lupker, S. J. 1979. The semantic nature of response competition in the picture–word interference task. Memory and Cognition, 7, 485–495.Google Scholar
Mägiste, E. 1984. Stroop tasks and dichotic translation: The development of interference patterns in bilinguals. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 10 (2), 304–315.Google Scholar
Poulisse, N. 1997. Language production in bilinguals. In de Groot, A. M. B. & Kroll, J. F. (eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives, pp. 201–224. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Roelofs, A. 1992. A spreading-activation theory of lemma retrieval in speaking. Cognition, 42, 107–142.Google Scholar
Roelofs, A. 2001. Set size and repetition matter: Comment on Caramazza and Costa (2000). Cognition, 80, 283–290.Google Scholar
Rosinski, R. R. 1977. Picture–word interference is semantically based. Child Development, 48 (2), 643–647.Google Scholar
Schriefers, H., Meyer, A. S. & Levelt, W. J. M. 1990. Exploring the time course of lexical access in language production: Picture–word interference studies. Journal of Memory and Language, 29 (1), 86–102.Google Scholar
Tzelgov, J., Henik, A. & Leiser, D. 1990. Controlling Stroop interference: Evidence from a bilingual task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 16 (5), 760–771.Google Scholar