Daan Hermans

Producing words in a foreign language: Can speakers prevent interference from their first language?

Two picture-word interference experiments were conducted to investigate whether or not words from a first and more dominant language are activated during lexical access in a foreign and less dominant language. Native speakers of Dutch were instructed to name pictures in their foreign language English. Our experiments show that the Dutch name of a picture is activated during initial stages of the process of lexical in English as a foreign language. We conclude that bilingual speakers cannot suppress activation from their first language while naming pictures in a foreign language. The implications for bilingual speech production theories are discussed.

The Relationship between the Reading and Signing Skills of Deaf Children in Bilingual Education Programs.

This paper reports on one experiment in which we investigated the relationship between reading and signing skills. We administered a vocabulary task and a story comprehension task in Sign Language of the Netherlands and in written Dutch to a group of 87 deaf children from bilingual education programs. We found a strong and positive correlation between the scores obtained in the sign vocabulary task and the reading vocabulary task when age, short-term memory scores, and nonverbal intelligence scores were controlled for. In addition, a correlation was observed between the scores in the story comprehension tasks in Sign Language of the Netherlands and written Dutch but only when vocabulary scores for words and signs were not taken into account. The results are briefly discussed with reference to a model we recently proposed to describe lexical development for deaf children in bilingual education programs (Hermans, D., Knoors, H., Ormel, E., & Verhoeven, L., 2008). In addition, the implications of the results of the present study for previous studies on the relationship between reading and signing skills are discussed.

Assessment of Sign Language Development: The Case of Deaf Children in the Netherlands

In this article, we will describe the development of an assessment instrument for Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) for deaf children in bilingual education programs. The assessment instrument consists of nine computerized tests in which the receptive and expressive language skills of deaf children at different linguistic levels (phonology, vocabulary, morphosyntax, and narration) are assessed. We will describe how the instrument was developed and normed, and present some psychometric properties of the instrument.

The Role of Sign Phonology and Iconicity During Sign Processing: The Case of Deaf Children

To investigate the influence of sign phonology and iconicity during sign processing in deaf children, the roles of these sign features were examined using an experimental sign-picture verification paradigm. Participants had to make decisions about sign-picture pairs, manipulated according to phonological sign features (i.e., hand shape, movement, and location) and iconic sign features (i.e., transparent depiction of meaning or not). We found that phonologically related sign pairs resulted in relatively longer response latencies and more errors whereas iconic sign pairs resulted in relatively shorter response latencies and fewer errors. The results showed that competing lexical sign candidates (neighbor signs) were activated during sign processing by deaf children. In addition, deaf children exploit the iconicity of signs during sign recognition.

Between-language identity effects in picture-word interference tasks: A challenge for language-nonspecific or language-specific models of lexical access?

In this paper the between-language identity facilitation effect reported by Costa, Miozzo, and Caramazza (1999) was re-examined. Costa et al. (1999) found that bilinguals name pictures accompanied by the pictures names in a language not required for production faster than pictures accompanied by unrelated words. The between-language identity facilitation effect has been taken as evidence in favor of language-specific models of lexical access (Costa et al., 1999; Costa & Caramazza, 1999). I report one picture-word interference experiment that shows that between-language identity facilitation can no longer be taken as evidence in favor of either language-specific or language-nonspecific models of lexical access.

Cross-language effects in written word recognition: The case of bilingual deaf children

In recent years, multiple studies have shown that the languages of a bilingual interact during processing. We investigated sign activation as deaf children read words. In a word–picture verification task, we manipulated the underlying sign equivalents. We presented children with word–picture pairs for which the sign translation equivalents varied with respect to sign phonology overlap (i.e., handshape, movement, hand-palm orientation, and location) and sign iconicity (i.e., transparent depiction of meaning or not). For the deaf children, non-matching word–picture pairs with sign translation equivalents that had highly similar elements (i.e., strong sign phonological relations) showed relatively longer response latencies and more errors than non-matching word–picture pairs without sign phonological relations (inhibitory effects). In contrast, matching word–picture pairs with strongly iconic sign translation equivalents showed relatively shorter response latencies and fewer errors than pairs with weakly iconic translation equivalents (facilitatory effects). No such activation effects were found in the word–picture verification task for the hearing children. The results provide evidence for interactive cross-language processing in deaf children.

Semantic categorization: a comparison between deaf and hearing children.

UNLABELLED Learning to read is a major obstacle for children who are deaf. The otherwise significant role of phonology is often limited as a result of hearing loss. However, semantic knowledge may facilitate reading comprehension. One important aspect of semantic knowledge concerns semantic categorization. In the present study, the quality of the semantic categorization of both deaf and hearing children was examined for written words and pictures at two categorization levels. The deaf children performed better at the picture condition compared to the written word condition, while the hearing children performed similarly at pictures and written words. The hearing children outperformed the deaf children, in particular for written words. In addition, the results of the deaf children for the written words correlated to their sign vocabulary and sign language comprehension. The increase in semantic categorization was limited across elementary school grade levels. LEARNING OUTCOMES Readers will be able to: (1) understand several semantic categorization differences between groups of deaf and hearing children; (2) describe factors that may affect the development of semantic categorization, in particular the relationship between sign language skills and semantic categorization for deaf children.

Lexical activation in bilinguals’ speech production is dynamic: How language ambiguous words can affect cross-language activation

Is the bilingual language production system a dynamic system that can operate in different language activation states? Three experiments investigated to what extent cross-language phonological co-activation effects in language production are sensitive to the composition of the stimulus list. L1 Dutch–L2 English bilinguals decided whether or not a particular phoneme was part of the L2 English name of the picture. The phoneme was either part of the English name of the picture (/b/ or /t/ in bottle), the Dutch name of the picture (/f/ in fles [bottle], the cross-language condition), or was not part of either the English or Dutch names of the picture (/p/, the unrelated condition). In Experiment 1, we added a set of filler pictures with noncognate names in Dutch and English. In contrast, the filler pictures in Experiment 2 all had cognate names in Dutch and English. In Experiment 3 the fillers consisted of a mixture of pictures with cognate (25%) and noncognate (75%) names. Cross-language phonological co-activation appeared sensitive to the composition of the stimulus list: Phonological co-activation effects were observed in Experiments 2 and 3, but not in Experiment 1. The results indicate that the bilingual language production system dynamic and can operate in different modes, depending upon the composition of the stimulus list. We discuss implications for experimental paradigms used in the field of bilingual language production, and for current bilingual language production models.

The detection of semantic illusions: Task specific effects for similarity and position of distorted terms

The effect of task demands on the detection of semantic illusions was investigated. In Exp. 1, subjects were given a detection task with different instructions for accuracy. Less illusions occurred under instructions that stressed accuracy, indicating strategic control of detection rates. In Exp. 2, sentences with dissimilar distorted terms resulted in shorter latencies than sentences with similar distorted terms in a detection task, but in longer response times in a question-answering task. In Exp. 3, the similarity effect was found to vary with the position of the distorted term in combination with task demands. In a verification task, the similarity effect did not differ for the beginning or the end of sentences. In a question-answering task, a significant similarity effect was observed only for distorted terms at the beginning of sentences. We argue that the results indicate minimal depth of semantic processing with respect to different task requirements. Implications for different theoretical accounts of semantic illusions are discussed.

Executive control in spoken noun-phrase production: Contributions of updating, inhibiting, and shifting

The present study examined how the updating, inhibiting, and shifting abilities underlying executive control influence spoken noun-phrase production. Previous studies provided evidence that updating and inhibiting, but not shifting, influence picture-naming response time (RT). However, little is known about the role of executive control in more complex forms of language production like generating phrases. We assessed noun-phrase production using picture description and a picture–word interference procedure. We measured picture description RT to assess length, distractor, and switch effects, which were assumed to reflect, respectively, the updating, inhibiting, and shifting abilities of adult participants. Moreover, for each participant we obtained scores on executive control tasks that measured verbal and nonverbal updating, nonverbal inhibiting, and nonverbal shifting. We found that both verbal and nonverbal updating scores correlated with the overall mean picture description RTs. Furthermore, the length effect in the RTs correlated with verbal but not nonverbal updating scores, while the distractor effect correlated with inhibiting scores. We did not find a correlation between the switch effect in the mean RTs and the shifting scores. However, the shifting scores correlated with the switch effect in the normal part of the underlying RT distribution. These results suggest that updating, inhibiting, and shifting each influence the speed of phrase production, thereby demonstrating a contribution of all three executive control abilities to language production.