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The Influence Of Lexical And Conceptual Constraints On Reading Mixed-Language Sentences: Evidence From Eye-Fixation And Naming Times, Jeanette Altaribba, Judith F. Kroll, Alexandra Sholl, Keith Rayner

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

In two experiments, we explored the degree to which sentence context effects operate at a lexical or conceptual level by examining the processing of mixed-language sentences by fluent Spanish-English bilinguals. In Experiment 1, subjects' eye movements were monitored while they read English sentences in which sentence constraint, word frequency, and language of target word were manipulated. A frequency x constraint interaction was found when target words appeared in Spanish, but not in English. First fixation durations were longer for high-frequency Spanish words when these were embedded in high-constraint sentences than in low-constraint sentences. This result suggests that the conceptual restrictions …