Non-Selective Lexical Access in Late Arabic–English Bilinguals: Evidence from Gating

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    1 Citation (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Previous research suggests that late bilinguals who speak typologically distant languages are the least likely to show evidence of non-selective lexical access processes. This study puts this claim to test by using the gating task to determine whether words beginning with speech sounds that are phonetically similar in Arabic and English (e.g., [b,d,m,n]) give rise to selective or non-selective lexical access processes in late Arabic–English bilinguals. The results show that an acoustic-phonetic input (e.g., [bæ]) that is consistent with words in Arabic (e.g., [bædrun] “moon”) and English (e.g., [bæd] “bad”) activates lexical representations in both languages of the bilingual. This non-selective activation holds equally well for mixed lists with words from both Arabic and English and blocked lists consisting only of Arabic or English words. These results suggest that non-selective lexical access processes are the default mechanism even in late bilinguals of typologically distant languages.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)913-930
    Number of pages18
    JournalJournal of Psycholinguistic Research
    Volume47
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Aug 1 2018

    Keywords

    • Arabic–English bilingualism
    • Cross-language acoustic-phonetic similarities
    • Gating

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Language and Linguistics
    • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
    • Psychology(all)
    • Linguistics and Language

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Non-Selective Lexical Access in Late Arabic–English Bilinguals: Evidence from Gating'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this