Van Assche, E. 1 , Drieghe, D. 2 , Duyck, W. 1 & Hartsuiker, R. J. 1
1 Ghent University
2 University of Southampton
This study investigated how a semantic sentence context influences cross-lingual interactions when reading in the second language. Studies on out-of-context word recognition already showed that cognates (translation equivalents with full or partial form overlap, e.g., Dutch-English schip-ship) were processed faster than noncognates, indicating cross-lingual activations in the bilingual language system (Dijkstra, Grainger, & van Heuven, 1999). In the current study with Dutch-English bilinguals, we investigated whether the semantic constraint of a sentence modulates these cross-lingual activations. Previous studies on this issue only found evidence for cross-lingual interactions in low-constraint sentences (e.g., Schwartz & Kroll, 2006; van Hell & de Groot, 2008). However, a recent eyetracking study by Libben and Titone (2009) testing form-identical cognates showed nonselective activation in ‘high’ (medium)-constraint sentences (cloze probabilities of .49) for early-stage comprehension measures. The present study used a much stronger semantic constraint manipulation (cloze probabilities of .89) and tested identical and nonidentical cognates to find out whether these divergent results were due to this difference across studies. We first replicated the cognate facilitation effect for words out-of-context and then presented these cognates and controls in high-constraint sentences in an eyetracking paradigm. The results showed cognate facilitation on early- (e.g., first fixation) and late-stage (e.g., go-past time) comprehension measures. A control experiment with English monolinguals showed no cognate facilitation. This ensured that the effects really originated from the bilingual nature of the participants. Our results indicate that the activation of both languages is not restricted by top-down semantic constraint during initial lexical access stages and is not yet completely resolved during later, higher-order stages. Moreover, the present study shows cognate facilitation to be a continuous effect dependent on orthographic overlap in the two languages.