Cargando…

Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset

Probabilistic associations make language processing efficient and are honed through experience. However, it is unclear what language experience factors explain the non-monolingual processing behaviors typical of L2 learners and heritage speakers (HSs). We investigated whether AoO, language proficien...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Sagarra, Nuria, Casillas, Joseph V.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10292756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37377705
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1141174
_version_ 1785062882327658496
author Sagarra, Nuria
Casillas, Joseph V.
author_facet Sagarra, Nuria
Casillas, Joseph V.
author_sort Sagarra, Nuria
collection PubMed
description Probabilistic associations make language processing efficient and are honed through experience. However, it is unclear what language experience factors explain the non-monolingual processing behaviors typical of L2 learners and heritage speakers (HSs). We investigated whether AoO, language proficiency, and language use affect the recognition of Spanish stress-tense suffix associations involving a stressed syllable that cues a present suffix (SALta “s/he jumps”) and an unstressed syllable that cues a past suffix (SALtó “s/he jumped”). Adult Spanish-English HSs, English-Spanish L2 learners, and Spanish monolinguals saw a paroxytone verb (stressed initial syllable) and an oxytone verb (unstressed initial syllable), listened to a sentence containing one of the verbs, and chose the one they heard. Spanish proficiency measured grammatical and lexical knowledge, and Spanish use assessed percentage of current usage. Both bilingual groups were comparable in Spanish proficiency and use. Eye-tracking data showed that all groups fixated on target verbs above chance before hearing the syllable containing the suffix, except the HSs in the oxytones. Monolinguals fixated on targets more and earlier, although at a slower rate, than HSs and L2 learners; in turn, HSs fixated on targets more and earlier than L2 learners, except in oxytones. Higher proficiency increased target fixations in HSs (oxytones) and L2 learners (paroxytones), but greater use only increased target fixations in HSs (oxytones). Taken together, our data show that HSs’ lexical access depends more on number of lexical competitors (co-activation of two L1 lexica) and type (phonotactic) frequency than token (lexical) frequency or AoO. We discuss the contribution of these findings to models in phonology, lexical access, language processing, language prediction, and human cognition.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-10292756
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2023
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-102927562023-06-27 Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset Sagarra, Nuria Casillas, Joseph V. Front Psychol Psychology Probabilistic associations make language processing efficient and are honed through experience. However, it is unclear what language experience factors explain the non-monolingual processing behaviors typical of L2 learners and heritage speakers (HSs). We investigated whether AoO, language proficiency, and language use affect the recognition of Spanish stress-tense suffix associations involving a stressed syllable that cues a present suffix (SALta “s/he jumps”) and an unstressed syllable that cues a past suffix (SALtó “s/he jumped”). Adult Spanish-English HSs, English-Spanish L2 learners, and Spanish monolinguals saw a paroxytone verb (stressed initial syllable) and an oxytone verb (unstressed initial syllable), listened to a sentence containing one of the verbs, and chose the one they heard. Spanish proficiency measured grammatical and lexical knowledge, and Spanish use assessed percentage of current usage. Both bilingual groups were comparable in Spanish proficiency and use. Eye-tracking data showed that all groups fixated on target verbs above chance before hearing the syllable containing the suffix, except the HSs in the oxytones. Monolinguals fixated on targets more and earlier, although at a slower rate, than HSs and L2 learners; in turn, HSs fixated on targets more and earlier than L2 learners, except in oxytones. Higher proficiency increased target fixations in HSs (oxytones) and L2 learners (paroxytones), but greater use only increased target fixations in HSs (oxytones). Taken together, our data show that HSs’ lexical access depends more on number of lexical competitors (co-activation of two L1 lexica) and type (phonotactic) frequency than token (lexical) frequency or AoO. We discuss the contribution of these findings to models in phonology, lexical access, language processing, language prediction, and human cognition. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-06-12 /pmc/articles/PMC10292756/ /pubmed/37377705 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1141174 Text en Copyright © 2023 Sagarra and Casillas. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Sagarra, Nuria
Casillas, Joseph V.
Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset
title Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset
title_full Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset
title_fullStr Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset
title_full_unstemmed Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset
title_short Practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset
title_sort practice beats age: co-activation shapes heritage speakers’ lexical access more than age of onset
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10292756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37377705
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1141174
work_keys_str_mv AT sagarranuria practicebeatsagecoactivationshapesheritagespeakerslexicalaccessmorethanageofonset
AT casillasjosephv practicebeatsagecoactivationshapesheritagespeakerslexicalaccessmorethanageofonset