Lexical competition in a spoken sentence context

Lagrou, E. , Hartsuiker, R. & Duyck, W.

Ghent University

In this study the visual world paradigm was used to examine lexical competition in auditory word recognition. More specifically, we investigated the effect of a low constraining sentence context on parallel language activation when listening in a second language (L2), but more importantly also when listening in the native language (L1). With this aim, eye movements were recorded while Dutch-English bilinguals listened to low constraining sentences in L2 (Experiment 1; e.g., “That man finally got a flower, and that’s why he is happy”) or in L1 (Experiment 2; e.g., “Die man kreeg eindelijk een fles (bottle), en was daarom gelukkig”). The results demonstrated that (a) participants fixated more on competitor pictures with Dutch names (e.g., fles (bottle)) phonologically related to English target names (e.g., flower) than on phonologically unrelated distractor pictures and (b) participants fixated more on competitor pictures with English names (e.g., flower) phonologically related to Dutch target names (e.g., fles (bottle)) than on phonologically unrelated distractor items. However, this effect was only observed when the phonologically related onset of the competitor picture was pronounced identical to the phonologically related onset of the target picture. Together, this study provides evidence for lexical competition in a spoken sentence context when listening in L2 and in L1, but highlights the importance of subtle phonological cues.