Roberto R. Heredia

Bilingual Language Mixing: Why Do Bilinguals Code-Switch?:

Bilingual speakers often code-switch from one language to another, especially when both languages are used in the environment. This article explores the potential theoretical explanations for this language behavior, the costs and benefits associated with language switching, and the role of language dominance in the direction of the switch. In short, code switching follows functional and grammatical principles and is a complex, rule-governed phenomenon. Although significant progress has been made in understanding the psycholinguistics of code switching, research is needed to examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying the bilinguals ability to integrate and separate two languages during the communicative process.

Getting a joke: the time course of meaning activation in verbal humor

Two lexical decision semantic priming experiments examined when, in the course of reading a joke, the initial and the intended meanings are primed; whether the meanings overlap in time; and what happens to the initial reading when the punchline is encountered. In Experiment 1, probes related to the first activated sense (S1) vs. the second sense (S2), or true meaning, were presented at each of three temporal sites for visually displayed joke tests: shortly after joke onset, at an intermediary position, and at punchline offset, whereas in Experiment 2, probes were presented at joke offset following prolonged viewing. The results from Experiment 1 showed S1 priming effects at the initial and intermediary time point. Priming for S2 also emerged at the intermediary time point and persisted at the final time point. In Experiment 2, the priming effect at joke offset was reliable only for S2. The results are taken to support a concurrent meaning activation view [in line with Attardo, Humor 10 (1997) 395] at incongruity detection, and a selective activation view [in line with Giora, Journal of Pragmatics 16 (1991) 465] at incongruity resolution.

Bilingual Memory Revisited

Abstract In this paper we address the question of how the bilingual stores information. We begin with a brief review of the research on bilingual memory. Our aim here is not to be exhaustive but representative. Next we turn to some recent work to bear on the question of bilingual memory. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for our understanding of how the bilingual mind is organized.

Hemispheric asymmetries in processing L1 and L2 idioms: Effects of salience and context☆

This study investigates the contribution of the left and right hemispheres to the comprehension of bilingual figurative language and the joint effects of salience and context on the differential cerebral involvement in idiom processing. The divided visual field and the lexical decision priming paradigms were employed to examine the activation of salient and nonsalient ambiguous idiom interpretations (i.e., literal vs. non-literal) in the two hemispheres. Literally plausible ambiguous idioms, L1 (Polish) and L2 (English), were embedded in unconstraining ambiguous (e.g., I knew he kept an ace up his sleeve) or constraining unambiguous context clearly favoring their conventional idiomatic interpretation (e.g., The debating president kept an ace up his sleeve). Idioms were presented centrally, followed by laterally presented targets related to the figurative (e.g., GAIN) or literal (e.g., SHIRT) meaning of the idiom and displayed at Interstimulus Intervals (ISIs) of 0 ms (Experiment 1), 300 ms (Experiment 2), and 800 ms (Experiment 3). Results indicate that context and salience effects are significantly modulated by the language (native vs. nonnative) of the stimulus materials being presented to each hemisphere. Literal facilitation was found for L2 idioms in all three ISI conditions, which supports the notion of the special status that literal meanings of L2 idioms enjoy in the course of their processing by nonnative language users. No significant differences were found between the right and left hemispheres in regards to their sensitivity to contextual constraints. Results are discussed in terms of the Graded Salience Hypothesis and the Fine/Coarse Coding Theory.

11 Understanding phrasal verbs in monolinguals and bilinguals

Abstract This study investigates how English monolinguals and bilinguals access lexical forms such as call on , which can be interpreted as either a phrasal verb, as in John called on the student , or as a verb-preposition combination, as in John called on the third floor . The results of an on-line sentence comprehension experiment indicate that both monolinguals and early bilinguals access phrasal verbs more quickly than verb-preposition combinations. The results also suggest that early bilinguals access both phrasal verbs and verb-preposition combinations as quickly as monolinguals do, whereas late bilinguals (even with high proficiency in English) do not.

On-line Processing of Social Stereotypes During Spoken Language Comprehension

Four experiments investigated stereotype processing during the on-line comprehension of spoken sentences. Participants listened to a critical prime (terrorist) embedded in a sentence and then made lexical decisions to visually presented standard-related (bomb) or stereotype-related targets (Arab) or unrelated controls for both conditions. For Experiments 1A and 1B, the preceding context provided no contextual information about the critical prime. Targets were presented at prime offset (Experiment 1A) or 300 ms after prime offset (Experiment 1B). In Experiments 2A and 2B, the preceding context was biased towards the stereotype meaning of the critical prime. Visual targets were presented at prime offset (Experiment 2A) or 300 ms after prime offset (Experiment 2B). Experiment 1A revealed a priming effect, but only for the standard meaning (i.e., bomb) of the critical prime. This effect was further replicated in Experiments 1B, 2A and 2B; however, for these experiments, unlike Experiment 1A, the results revealed lexical inhibition for the stereotype meaning of the critical prime. That is, lexical decisions to the stereotype-related targets were actually slower than the stereotype-unrelated controls. The results are discussed in terms of current social cognitive models of stereotype processing.

Foundations of Bilingual Memory

Section I. Bilingual Models.- The Classic Bilingual Memory View: How Everything Started.- Bilingual Memory Models.- Bilingual Dual Coding Theory.- Connectionist Models of Bilingual Memory.- Models of Lexical Access and Bilingualism.- Section II. Episodic, Semantic, and Working Memory.- Episodic Memory.- Semantic Memory.- Explicit vs. Implicit Memory.- Emotion and Memory.- False Memories.- Working Memory.- Section III. The Neuroscience of Bilingual Memory.- The Neuroscience of Bilingual Memory.- Hemispheric Differences and Memory Storage.

Bilingual Memory Storage: Compound-Coordinate and Derivatives

A recurring theoretical issue in the study of bilingualism concerns the manner in which speakers of one or more languages might store their languages in memory.

1 On-line methods in bilingual spoken language research

Abstract In this chapter, we review several methodological approaches to studying spoken language comprehension in bilinguals. In particular, we focus on those tasks that allow for closer scrutiny of sentence level processing, including gating ( Grosjean, 1980 , Grosjean, 1996 ), cued shadowing ( Bates & Liu, 1996 ), cross-modal lexical priming ( Swinney, 1979 ), and the auditory moving-window ( Ferreira, Henderson, Anes, Weeks, & McFarlane, 1996 ). Throughout the chapter, we offer suggestions as to how these techniques might be used to investigate a host of issues important to researchers in bilingualism, including but not limited to grammatical priming, ambiguity resolution, and contextual priming. We highlight the potential strengths and weaknesses of each paradigm and, whenever possible, offer suggestions as to future work that might be conducted using a particular experimental procedure. In the end, our hope is that the reader will come away with a stronger sense of the sorts of techniques that are available and are being used by researchers in the field of bilingual sentence processing.

It’s All in the Eyes: How Language Dominance, Salience, and Context Affect Eye Movements During Idiomatic Language Processing

This paper reports an eye movement study and the effects of salience, context, and language dominance on the processing of idiomatic expressions by Spanish–English bilinguals. Salient meanings of figurative expressions are those which are processed first and accessed automatically from the mental lexicon, regardless of contextual bias (Giora 2003). The research conducted so far with second language (L2) learners and bilingual participants has shown that the literal meaning of L2 idioms might be more salient than the figurative one in the course of their processing by non-native language users (e.g. Kecskes 2000; Liontas 2002; Cieślicka 2006; Cieślicka and Heredia 2011). In addition, research findings suggest that the degree of language dominance, or which language is more readily accessible due to usage (Heredia 1997; Heredia and Altarriba 2001; Altarriba and Basnight-Brown 2007), might be a factor in bilingual processing. To investigate whether the degree of literal and figurative activation in bilingual idiom processing may be modulated by language dominance (i.e. dominant vs. nondominant), we recorded eye movements of Spanish–English bilinguals, dominant either in Spanish or in English, while they were reading ambiguous (literally plausible, such as ‘kick the bucket’) English idioms. Each idiom was used either in its figurative or literal meaning and embedded in a sentence with neutral preceding context, in which case its figurative (‘Within seconds she realized she was in deep water, and that she would very soon come to regret her words’) or literal (‘Within seconds she realized she was in deep water, and that she would very soon have to swim back towards the shore’) meaning became clear due to the subsequent disambiguating information, or the preceding supportive context clearly biasing one of the meanings (e.g. figurative biased: ‘Since both of us were equally guilty of causing the overspend, we both knew we were in deep water, and very likely to lose our jobs’). As predicted, the results indicated that the effects of salience and context on eye movement patterns are modulated by language dominance.