Bilingualism: Language and Cognition

Table of Contents - July 2011 - Volume 14, Issue 03  

Research Article

Working memory influences on cross-language activation during bilingual lexical disambiguation

ANA B. ARÊAS DA LUZ FONTESa1 c1 and ANA I. SCHWARTZa1

a1 The University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

This study investigated the role of verbal working memory on bilingual lexical disambiguation. Spanish–English bilinguals read sentences that ended in either a cognate or noncognate homonym or a control word. Participants decided whether follow-up target words were related in meaning to the sentences. On critical trials, sentences biased the subordinate meaning of a homonym and were followed by targets related to the dominant meaning. Bilinguals with high span were faster at rejecting unrelated targets when the sentences ended in a homonym, whereas bilinguals with low span were slower. Furthermore, error rates for bilinguals with low span showed cognate inhibition, while bilinguals with high span showed no effects of cross-language activation. Results demonstrated that bilinguals with high span benefit from shared lexical codes whether these converge on to a single semantic representation (cognates) or not (homonyms). Conversely, bilinguals with low span showed inhibition from the competing lexical codes, even when they converge onto a single semantic representation.

(Received June 09 2009)

(Revised July 20 2010)

(Accepted July 28 2010)

(Online publication December 02 2010)

Keywords:

Correspondence:

c1 Address for correspondence: Ana B. Arêas da Luz Fontes, Department of Psychology, 500 W. University Ave., University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, Texas 79968, USA aafontes@miners.utep.edu

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