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Article published In:
Bi-/Multilingualism and the Declining Brain
Edited by Christos Pliatsikas, Ana Inés Ansaldo and Toms Voits
[Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 11:4] 2021
► pp. 578–610

Spoken word processing in bilingual older adults

Assessing within- and cross-language competition using the visual world task

| McGill University
| McGill University
| McGill University
| McGill University
| McGill University
| McGill University

We investigated whether bilingual older adults experience within- and cross-language competition during spoken word recognition similarly to younger adults matched on age of second language (L2) acquisition, objective and subjective L2 proficiency, and current L2 exposure. In a visual world eye-tracking paradigm, older and younger adults, who were French-dominant or English-dominant English-French bilinguals, listened to English words, and looked at pictures including the target (field), a within-language competitor (feet) or cross-language (French) competitor (fille, “girl”), and unrelated filler pictures while their eye movements were monitored. Older adults showed evidence of greater within-language competition as a function of increased target and competitor phonological overlap. There was some evidence of age-related differences in cross-language competition, however, it was quite small overall and varied as a function of target language proficiency. These results suggest that greater within- and possibly cross-language lexical competition during spoken word recognition may underlie some of the communication difficulties encountered by healthy bilingual older adults.

Keywords: spoken word recognition, bilingualism, aging, visual world, eye-tracking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials
    • 2.3Apparatus
    • 2.4Procedure
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Within-language competition
      • 3.1.1Fixations to target pictures as a function of display (competitor display vs. no-competitor display), only when the target was heard
      • 3.1.2Fixations to within-language competitor pictures as a function of word heard (target vs. control), only when competitor displays were presented
      • 3.1.3Correct mouse clicks for within-language competitor-display trials as a function of word heard (target vs. control)
      • 3.1.4Interactions with English-language proficiency for older adults alone
      • 3.1.5Within-language competition summary
    • 3.2Cross-language competition
      • 3.2.1Fixations to target pictures as a function of display (competitor display vs. no-competitor display), only when the target was heard
      • 3.2.2Fixations to cross-language competitor pictures as a function of word heard (target vs. control), only when competitor displays were presented
      • 3.2.3Correct mouse clicks for cross-language competitor-display trials as a function of word heard (target vs. control)
      • 3.2.4Interaction with English-language proficiency in older adults
      • 3.2.5Cross-language competition summary
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 13 February 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.18028.tit
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Pliatsikas, Christos, Ana Inés Ansaldo & Toms Voits
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