engleski

Automaticity in lexical access in bilinguals and second language learners

The present study aims to investigate lexical access in bilinguals and second language learners while taking into consideration bilingual and second language learners` automaticity of this process. More specifically, it aims to define whether different levels of bilingual language proficiency produce differences in automaticity in lexical access in the weaker language and whether there are differences in reaction time and accuracy of lexical access in the stronger and weaker language among groups with different levels of proficiency in L2. We tested three groups of high school children: the first group were Croatian German early bilinguals, the second group were Croatian native speakers who were enrolled in a German immersion programme at school and the third group were Croatian native speakers who learned German as a school subject. We tested the participants on a modified version of the Stroop test in which they were presented with pictures of an animal or an object with names of an animal or an object written over the picture. The names of the objects and animals were written in one of the two languages, Croatian or German, and were either congruent or incongruent. The four conditions were presented randomly. We found automaticity in lexical access i.e. the Stroop effect for all three groups in Croatian language and the Croatian German early bilingual group demonstrated the Stroop effect in German language as well. This finding suggests that the other two groups were not proficient enough in the weaker language to be able to demonstrate the Stroop effect. Balanced bilinguals were overall slower in lexical access in both languages which suggests that automatic processing in both languages engaged more of their cognitive resources. These findings are interpreted in terms of Grosjean`s bilingual language mode (2008) and Green`s inhibitory control model (1998).

Stroop; RT; bilinguals; language learners; automaticity

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