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Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Mechanisms Of False Memories In Bilinguals, Bianca Valentina Gurrola
Mechanisms Of False Memories In Bilinguals, Bianca Valentina Gurrola
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Research on false memory in bilinguals has discovered that false memories can transfer across languages and occur at a higher rate than for within-language false memories (Marmolejo et al., 2009). However, the exact conditions that cause the stronger between-language false memory effect are not clear, nor is it clear how language proficiency influences the production of false memories. The present study had three goals. First, we tested whether the stronger between- language false memory effect relative to the within-language effect would replicate. Second, we examined whether bilinguals could integrate information across languages to form false memories by implementing a mixed-language …
Assessing How Bilingual Experience Impacts Performance In Stimulus-Stimulus And Stimulus-Response Conflict Tasks, Christian Ruiz-Ortiz
Assessing How Bilingual Experience Impacts Performance In Stimulus-Stimulus And Stimulus-Response Conflict Tasks, Christian Ruiz-Ortiz
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Numerous studies have revealed that bilingual individuals outperform monolinguals in tasks requiring executive control. However, the exact impact of bilingualism on executive functions remains unclear due to inconsistent findings in the literature. These discrepancies may stem from factors such as participant demographics, variations in definitions and operationalizations of bilingualism, and task selection. To address these issues, we investigated the link between degree of balance and contextual use with the ability to address conflict across sensory modalities (auditory and visual) at different stages of processing. Rather than focusing on mean performance, this study investigated performance stability (coefficient of variation) over time …
Who Said What To Whom?: Contextual Memory Processes In Bilinguals, Naoko Tsuboi
Who Said What To Whom?: Contextual Memory Processes In Bilinguals, Naoko Tsuboi
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Source memory is memory for sources of information (who gave the information), whereas destination memory is memory for destinations of information (to whom the information was given). Prior literature found that source memory exceeded destination memory, and destination memory was impaired remarkably under high cognitive demand tasks. These findings supported the attention hypothesis, the idea that greater attentional resource availability leads to better source and destination memory. The current study extended prior source and destination research to bilingualism because bilinguals are thought to have a greater attention control ability than monolinguals. In the only published study to compare bilingual and …
Language Dependent Effects Of Nostalgia, Via Mental Transportation, Among Bilinguals, Nicholas Daniel Evans
Language Dependent Effects Of Nostalgia, Via Mental Transportation, Among Bilinguals, Nicholas Daniel Evans
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
People more easily recall autobiographical memories with greater mental imagery when recalling them in their dominant language and when the language of recall matches the language of encoding. Nostalgia, an emotional experience borne out of autobiographical recall and facilitated through mental imagery, may also be influenced by the language in which nostalgic memories are both encoded and recalled. This project tested how the language of encoding and recall of nostalgic memories in people's dominant (vs. non-dominant) language influences the degree to which people mentally transport to nostalgic events and consequently experience meaning in life and self-continuity. Study 1 (N = …
Bilingual Children's L1 And L2 Word Frequency Effects: The Role Of Individual Differences, Astrid Michelle Portillo
Bilingual Children's L1 And L2 Word Frequency Effects: The Role Of Individual Differences, Astrid Michelle Portillo
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Bilingualism continues to grow among the world's population. Nevertheless, most research studies on language processing have focused on monolingual individuals, leaving questions about how language processing unfolds in bilingual individuals. Here, we investigated how individual differences in bilingual experience, indexed by current L2 exposure, impact eye movement measures of reading fluency, indexed by word frequency effects, in an understudied population: bilingual children. Prior eye movement research involving bilingual younger adults (aged 18 to 30) has reported a trade-off in L1 and L2 word frequency effects with greater levels of current L2 exposure (Whitford & Titone, 2012, 2017). We wanted to …
Cross-Language Activation And Integration Of Concepts In Text Passages, Karly Meillyn Schleicher
Cross-Language Activation And Integration Of Concepts In Text Passages, Karly Meillyn Schleicher
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Learning from text requires the ability to efficiently activate and retrieve relevant concepts from long-term memory and connect these with new information that is being presented in the text. It is assumed that memory representations built from text can be influenced by both surface level information (i.e., word forms), or deeper, conceptual level information. The goal of the present study was to investigate the role of surface level features (i.e., language) influence memory representations developed from text. By recruiting Spanish-English bilinguals, the present study investigated how surface level features from a reader's two lexicons influences the activation and integration of …
Concreteness, Frequency, And Bilingual Language Dominance: Implications For The Impact Of Context Availability In Explicit Memory, Randolph Taylor
Concreteness, Frequency, And Bilingual Language Dominance: Implications For The Impact Of Context Availability In Explicit Memory, Randolph Taylor
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
One explanation for why concrete words are better recalled than abstract words is systematic differences across these word types in the availability of context information. In contrast, explanations for the concrete word advantage in recognition memory do not consider a possible role for context availability. Like concrete words, low-frequency words and L2 words also demonstrate item recognition advantages over high-frequency words and L1 words, respectively. Although the theories explaining these advantages do not explicitly discuss context availability, the mechanisms described suggest that context availability may play a role. The present study examined the extent to which context availability can explain …
Bilingual Novel Word Learning In Sentence Contexts, Justin G. Lauro
Bilingual Novel Word Learning In Sentence Contexts, Justin G. Lauro
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
According to the Instance-based framework of adult vocabulary learning, each time a learner encounters a new word in context, an episodic memory trace, containing the word itself and the surrounding context, is formed. Previous research has demonstrated an advantage in memory for words encountered in a variety of semantic contexts. This advantage occurs because distinctive contexts generate more distinctive memory traces. While research has demonstrated that a variety of contextual characteristics are encoded (e.g. semantic context, modality, and language), it is unknown whether varying the language context in which a word is encountered has a similar benefit on memory for …
Source Monitoring In Bilinguals, Renee Michelle Penalver
Source Monitoring In Bilinguals, Renee Michelle Penalver
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Source memory is memory for the context in which a particular target item is learned (Parker, 1995). The source-monitoring framework is the leading model of source memory (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). It remains unknown at what level context-to-word associations are made (e.g., at the word form level or conceptual level). Three experiments examined the effects of word frequency and language proficiency on source memory, with each experiment addressing one of the different types of source monitoring identified in this framework. In Experiment 1, we examined how language proficiency and word frequency affect external source discrimination. Participants had to discriminate …
Cross-Language Conceptual Activation And Development Through Text Passages, Karly Meillyn Schleicher
Cross-Language Conceptual Activation And Development Through Text Passages, Karly Meillyn Schleicher
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The present study begins to bridge the gap between bilingual education practices and cognitive frameworks of bilingual conceptual access. A reading comprehension task was used to investigate how bilingual undergraduate students activate and develop academic information across their two languages when reading expository text. Using scientific texts, participants (N = 128) read two distinct passages pertaining to prior knowledge, as well as new, related conceptual information. At test, the participants were asked to complete true-false questions and elaborate on the reasons for their responses. A counterbalanced, mixed factorial design was used to infer how language dominance influences encoding and retrieval …
The Effects Of Task Demands And Word Frequency On Language Source Encoding, Elva Natalia Strobach Oronoz
The Effects Of Task Demands And Word Frequency On Language Source Encoding, Elva Natalia Strobach Oronoz
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Source memory effects have been relatively unexplored in bilingual memory. Bilinguals have to perform certain source encoding operations to successfully determine the appropriate language from context. These operations have not been examined from a long-term memory perspective, and are not incorporated into models of source monitoring. Further, language source information is not incorporated into the major models of bilingual language processing. Five experiments examined bilingualsâ?? language source monitoring for low- and high-frequency words in English and Spanish. Each experiment placed different processing demands on participants. In Experiment 1, participants studied a mixed-language word list, then were subsequently tested for language …
The Effects Of Word Frequency And Language Proficiency On Repetition Priming And Picture Naming, Renee Michelle Penalver
The Effects Of Word Frequency And Language Proficiency On Repetition Priming And Picture Naming, Renee Michelle Penalver
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Frequency is known to modulate outcomes on tasks like picture naming. According to the frequency lag hypoThesis there is a common mechanism for the effects of word frequency, language dominance and bilingual and monolingual differences in picture naming (Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008; Gollan, Slattery, Goldenberg, Van Assche, Duyck, & Rayner, 2011). English monolinguals and English-Spanish bilinguals were tested on a picture naming task with pictures that had high and low frequency names. Response times, priming scores, and error rates were assessed. Response times indicated that monolinguals, and bilinguals were slower to respond to for low frequency picture names …
Strengthening Cognitive Development In Minority Populations: A Study Of The Beneficial Effects Of Bilingualism, Marisela Gutierrez
Strengthening Cognitive Development In Minority Populations: A Study Of The Beneficial Effects Of Bilingualism, Marisela Gutierrez
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The long-term goal of this research is to better understand and characterize the "bilingual advantage" so that educational and child care institutions begin to recognize and encourage the active use of two languages to strengthen cognitive development in minority populations. The present study is one of the first one to include a very large sample of well-defined "active bilinguals" who, by objective measures, were determined to be bilingual and determined to engage in language switching on a daily basis. Another goal was to manipulate and activate in the laboratory what might be referred to as the "switching benefit." One hundred …
Between-Language Repetition Priming In Antonym Generation: Examining Conceptual Encoding And Representation Of Adjectives, Randy Steven Taylor
Between-Language Repetition Priming In Antonym Generation: Examining Conceptual Encoding And Representation Of Adjectives, Randy Steven Taylor
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Previous research has shown repetition priming effects between languages, suggesting that a bilingual's two languages share conceptual representation. However these studies have been conducted mainly utilizing concrete nouns as stimuli. In the present study, it was hypothesized that adjectives would produce significant between-language repetition priming. The experiment utilized a 4 (encoding task) X 2 (test language) within-subjects design in which participants (N = 64) encoded words in read only, translation English to Spanish and translation Spanish to English conditions and at test performed an antonym generation task in either Spanish or English. The results revealed that participants were significantly faster …
Implicit And Explicit Memory Performance In Bilinguals: Implications For Transfer-Appropriate Processing And Vocabulary Learning, Elva Natalia Strobach
Implicit And Explicit Memory Performance In Bilinguals: Implications For Transfer-Appropriate Processing And Vocabulary Learning, Elva Natalia Strobach
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Two experiments examined whether translation and sentence context improved memory performance in explicit and implicit memory. For explicit memory, an effect of translation was found such that translation led to better item recognition than read aloud encoding. Sentence context did not benefit recognition memory performance. For implicit memory, neither translation nor sentence context led to priming in a word-stem completion paradigm. The results are discussed in terms of the transfer-appropriate processing framework.
The Role Of Cross-Language Activation In Syntactic Ambiguity, Li-Hao Yeh
The Role Of Cross-Language Activation In Syntactic Ambiguity, Li-Hao Yeh
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
There is much evidence demonstrating that bilinguals activate lexical representations from both of their languages in a non-selective manner even in sentence context. Comparatively less research has examined the extent to which bilingual lexical representations interacts with syntactic processing in sentence context. The purpose of this study is to examine whether bilinguals' cross-language lexical activation could influence their resolution of syntactic ambiguity (e.g. relative clause attachment). Proper attachment of relative clauses (RC) to noun phrases is critical for accurate interpretation of syntactically ambiguous sentences. For instance, the sentence The robber shot the secretary of my husband who goes to work …
Bilingual Homonym Disambiguation At The Discourse Level, Yvette Aguilar Baca
Bilingual Homonym Disambiguation At The Discourse Level, Yvette Aguilar Baca
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of global context and local context on the time course of activation of cognate homonyms for bilingual readers. Of interest was whether meaning frequency, context, and cross-language activation modulated the time course of activation of the subordinate meaning of cognate homonyms. Also, whether the subordinate bias effect would be altered or even eliminated by the combined influence of such contextual factors and cross-language activation. Eye movements of Spanish-English bilinguals were measured using an eye-tracking device while they read English paragraphs. The paragraphs contained cognate homonyms (e.g. novel/novela), cognate non-homonyms (e.g. …
An Investigation Of The Individual Differences In Cognitive Factors That Contribute To Bilingual Lexical Disambiguation, Ana B. Areas Da Luz Fontes
An Investigation Of The Individual Differences In Cognitive Factors That Contribute To Bilingual Lexical Disambiguation, Ana B. Areas Da Luz Fontes
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of working memory capacity, access to subordinate meanings of L1 homonyms and degree of cross-language activation on the access to subordinate meanings of L2 homonyms. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals completed a word recognition task which assessed how quickly and accurately they accessed subordinate meanings of English homonyms that were either noncognates (e.g. fast/rápido) or cognates (e.g. letter/letra) with Spanish. In Experiment 2, another group of Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences while having their eye-movements recorded for measures of lexical access. On the critical trials, sentences contained a homonym that was …
Reanalysis Of Some Effects Of The Mutual Exclusivity Constraint And Their Operation In Bilingual Children, Marina Kalashnikova
Reanalysis Of Some Effects Of The Mutual Exclusivity Constraint And Their Operation In Bilingual Children, Marina Kalashnikova
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
This study investigates the operation of the Mutual Exclusivity constraint in two groups of three-year-old children: monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual Spanish-English speakers. Previous research has yielded controversial findings regarding the differences in the intra-lingual level operation of the constraint in monolingual and bilingual children. This investigation sheds light on the conflicting outcomes of previous studies by proposing that non-linguistic cognitive and processing abilities may account for the effects attributed to the constraint and that there may be observable differences in monolingual and bilingual children in the development of some--but not all--of these abilities. Although, this study yielded no significant …
A Study Of Possible Pre-Cognitive Advantages Of Bilingualism, Marisela Gutierrez
A Study Of Possible Pre-Cognitive Advantages Of Bilingualism, Marisela Gutierrez
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
Past research has suggested that second language acquisition has a beneficial effect on the development of inhibitory control processes in children and adults. This has been referred to as the "bilingual advantage" and is most commonly quantified using the Simon task. Whether the bilingual advantage extends to precognitive mechanisms has not yet been examined. The goals of this study were to examine the bilingual advantage in university students; and to examine whether the bilingual advantage extends to the precognitive filtering mechanism of sensorimotor gating. It was predicted that, as compared to monolinguals, bilingual university students would have greater inhibitory control, …
Developing Lexical Competition Resolution Mechanisms Through Reading Experiences, Ana B. Areas Da Luz Fontes
Developing Lexical Competition Resolution Mechanisms Through Reading Experiences, Ana B. Areas Da Luz Fontes
Open Access Theses & Dissertations
The goal of the present study was to investigate whether competition resolution mechanisms are improved throughout a student's college years. For this purpose, I bilingual participants with a range in the number of college credits completed (e.g., freshmen to seniors) were recruited. Participants were presented with sentences that biased the less frequent, or subordinate meaning of an ambiguous word (e.g., novel, fast) (e.g., novel: something new; fast: to not eat). The ambiguous word was either a Spanish-English cognate (e.g., novel/novela) or a noncognate control (e.g., fast). These sentences were followed by target words that, on critical trials, were related to …