Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to BilingualismVol. 8:3 (2018) ► pp.372–392
Lexical access in English-Spanish bilinguals
A comparison of advanced heritage speakers and late learners
Does early onset age of language learning in an informal setting always have a long-term advantage? We compared lexical access in adult heritage speakers of Spanish and late learners of Spanish in two word-production tasks, while also considering the speakers’ oral proficiency in their non-dominant language. In all speakers, word recall in the picture-naming task was less accurate and slower than in the translation task. Heritage speakers and late learners of high Spanish proficiency level were different only in the translation task, where learners were faster than heritage speakers, which may be explained by their experience with translation of visual input. These findings suggest that for a non-dominant language, an early onset of learning does not provide an advantage, at least when high-proficiency bilinguals, high-frequency words, and behavioral measures are concerned. Oral proficiency matters most, as it correlates with frequency of language use.
Keywords: heritage speakers, second language learners, high language proficiency, age and setting of language learning, Spanish
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Approaches to studying lexical access in bilinguals
- 3.The effect of language proficiency on lexical access
- 4.The effect of age of acquisition on lexical access
- 5.Study justification and predictions
- 6.Method
- 6.1Participants
- 6.2Materials
- 6.3Procedure
- 6.4Data analysis
- Accuracy
- Reaction times
- 7.Results
- 7.1Accuracy
- 7.2Reaction times
- 8.Discussion
- Early informal acquisition and picture-naming performance
- Late formal acquisition and translation performance
- The translation task practice effect
- 9.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
-
References
References (31)
Ammerlaan, T. (1996). “You get a bit wobbly”: Exploring bilingual lexical retrieval processes in the context of first language attrition. Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
Benmamoun, E., Montrul, S., & Polinsky, M. (2013). Defining and “ideal” heritage speaker: Theoretical and methodological challenges. Reply to peer commentaries. Theoretical Linguistics, 39(3–4), 259–294.
Bonin, P., Peereman, R., Malardier, N., Méot, A., & Chalard, M. (2003). A new set of 299 pictures for psycholinguistic studies: French norms for name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, visual complexity, image variability, age of acquisition and naming latencies. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments & Computers, 35(1), 158–167. 
Carreira, M. (2014). Spanish as a Heritage Language. In: J. Hualde et al. (Eds.), The handbook of Hispanic linguistics. Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 765–782.
de Bot, K. (2004). Introduction: Special issue on language attrition. International Journal of Bilingualism, 8(3), 233–237.
De Groot, A. (1992). Bilingual lexical representation: A closer look at conceptual representations. In R. Frost, & M. Katz (Eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning (pp. 389–412). New York: North-Holland.
De Groot, A., Dannenburg, L., & Van Hell, J. (1994). Forward and backward word translation by bilinguals. Journal of Memory and Language, 33(5), 600–629.
Dong, Y., Gui, S., & MacWhinney, B. (2005). Shared and separate meanings in the bilingual mental lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 8(3), 221–238.
Dorian, N. C. (1982). Language loss and maintenance in language contact situations. In R. D. Lambert, & B. F. Freed (Eds.), The loss of language skills (pp. 44–59). Rowley: Newbury House.
Fishman, J. (2001). 300-plus years of heritage language education in the United States. In. J. Peyton et al. (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource (pp.81–98). Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics & Delta Systems.
Ferré, P., Sánchez-Casas, R., & Guasch, M. (2006). Can a horse be a donkey? Semantic and form interference effects in translation recognition in early and late proficient and non-proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals. Language Learning, 56(4), 571–608.
Francis, W. S., Corral, N. I., Jones, M. L., & Sáenz, S. P. (2008). Decomposition of repetition priming components in picture naming. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 137(3), 566–590.
Francis, W. S., Durán, G., Augustini, B. K., Luévano, G., Arzate, J. C., & Sáenz, S. P. (2011). Decomposition of repetition priming processes in word translation. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37(1), 187–205.
Francis, W. S., Tokowicz, N., & Kroll, J. F. (2014). The consequences of language proficiency and difficulty of lexical access for translation performance and priming. Memory & Cognition, 42(1), 27–40.
IBM Corp. (2016). IBM SPSS Statistics for Macintosh (Version 24.0) [Software]. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp.
Instituto Cervantes (2012). Diplomas de Español como Lengua Extranjera B1 [Certificates of Spanish as a Foreign Language, Level B1]. [URL] (retrieved July, 2015).
Kroll, J. F., & De Groot, A. M. (1997). Lexical and conceptual memory in the bilingual: Mapping form to meaning in two languages. In L. Wei (Ed.) (2007), The Bilingualism Reader (pp. 405–427). New York: Routledge.
Kroll, J. F., & Dijkstra, T. (2002). The bilingual lexicon. In R. Kaplan (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of applied linguistics (pp. 301–321). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory & Language, 33(2), 149–174.
Marian, V. (2008). Bilingual research methods. In J. Altarriba & R. Heredia (Eds.), Introduction to bilingualism: Principles and processes (pp. 13–37). New York: LEA.
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H. K., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The language experience and proficiency questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 50(4), 940–967.
Montrul, S. (2012). Is the heritage language like a second language? EUROSLA Yearbook, 121, 1–29.
Montrul, S., & Foote, R. (2014). Age of acquisition interactions in bilingual lexical access: A study of the weaker language of L2 learners and heritage speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 18(3), 271–303.
O’Grady, W., Schafer, A. J., Perla, J., Lee, O. -S., & Wieting, J. (2009). A psycholinguistic tool for the assessment of language loss: The HALA project. Language Documentation & Conservation, 3(1), 100–112.
Polinsky, M. (2008). Russian gender under incomplete acquisition: Heritage speakers’ knowledge of noun categorization. Heritage Language Journal, 6(1), 40–71.
Psychology Software Tools, Inc. [E-Prime 2.0]. (2012).
Real Academia Española [Royal Academy of the Spanish language]. (2008). Corpus de referencia del español actual. [URL] (retrieved August, 2015).
Roufca, P. (1992). A longitudinal study of second language acquisition in French. Unpublished manuscript. Mount Holyoke College.
Sánchez-Casas, R., Davis, C., & García-Albea, J. (1992). Bilingual lexical processing: Exploring the cognate to non-cognate distinction. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 4(4), 293–310.
Sholl, A., Sankaranarayanan, A., & Kroll, J. F. (1995). Transfer between picture naming and translation: A test of asymmetries in bilingual memory. Psychological Science, 6(1), 45–49.
Valdés, G. (2001). Heritage language students: Profiles and possibilities. In J. Peyton et al. (Eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource. (pp. 37–87). Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics.