Category Interference in Translation and Picture Naming: Evidence for Asymmetric Connections Between Bilingual Memory Representations

“For example, in the semantic blocking paradigm where participants are asked to name a series of pictures that are either taken from the same semantic category (homogenous condition) or different categories (heterogeneous condition), participants take longer to name pictures in the homogenous condition (Kroll and Stewa…”

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“Most research on language integration in bilinguals has been concerned with conceptual and lexical representations (Dijkstra, Van Heuven, & Grainger, 1998; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Van Hell & De Groot, 1998).”

“This view is similar to those expressed in studies of graded conceptual representations of unambiguous words (e.g., Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; McRae & Boisvert, 1998; Vigliocco, Vinson, Lewis, & Garrett, 2004).”

“Arguably, the attentional load involved in picture naming is smaller than that involved in word translation (e.g., word translation requires a bilingual to have two lexicons activated simultaneously, keep control over them, avoid phonological interference from the to-be-translated word, and perform a cognitive task th…”

“…connections between the semantic system and the lexical system of the nondominant language (L2) are too weak for lexical representations to become activated highly enough to compete with their dominant language (L1) counterparts (cf. Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, Von Eckardt, & Feldman, 1984).”

“If cross-language semantic and translation priming are largely conceptually mediated, then a prerequisite for cross-language effects is the establishment of L2 word form-to-concept links (in line with the Revised Hierarchical Model), as well as links between semantically related words within the L2.”

“Kroll and Stewart (1994) proposed that there is an L1-dependency of L2, because an L2 is generally acquired with reference to existing L1 concepts (i.e., an L2 is mediated through L1 translation whereas L1 is concept mediated).”

“This led to the development of Revised Hierarchical Models (Dufour & Kroll, 1995; Kroll & Sholl, 1992; Kroll et al., 1992; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Sholl, Sankaranarayanan, & Kroll, 1995) which posit three components: two lexical stores, one for each of the two languages, and one conceptual store.”

“The separability of lexical meaning and conceptual knowledge is supported by many empirical studies, especially in the context of bilingual memory (e.g., Potter et al., 1984; Potter and Kroll, 1987; de Groot 1992; Kroll and Sholl, 1992; Kroll, 1993; Kroll and Stewart, 1994).”

“Revised Hierarchical Model (e.g., see Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll & Tokowicz, 2005)”

“As has been reported in several studies by Martin and colleagues (Freedman & Martin, 2001; R. C. Martin & He, 2004; R. C. Martin & Lesch, 1996), a number of features of M.L.’s STM deficit support the conclusion that he has a deficit in semantic retention but shows better retention of phonological…”

“The effect has also been observed in the auditory modality (Marian & Spivey, 2003) and in word production (Costa, Caramazza & Sebastián-Gallés, 2000; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“As low proficiency learners are argued to rely more heavily on word form level (not necessarily semantic), links between the L1 and L2 than more advanced learners [27,45], the low proficiency group may be particularly likely to show a N200 modulation if the L1 is active during L2 processing.”

“N IH -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript Based on the theories of bilingual language development (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll, et al, 2010; MacWhinney, 2005a) and what we know about typical monolingual narrative development (Berman, 1988), we established…”

“Some authors suggest that lexical representations from both languages are stored within a unitary system and that language-specific lexical selection occurs late in visual word recognition (ie, Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002 ), while others are proposing separate lexical stores for each language (ie, Kroll & Stewart, 199…”

“, Levelt, 1989; Roelofs, 1992, 1993). For instance, in Pickering and Branigan’s (1998) model of monolingual syntactic priming and Hartsuiker et al.”

“Other bilingual data have also motivated the assumption that L2 activates conceptual memory weakly relative to LI. For example, Kroll and Stewart (1990, 1994) demonstrated that translation from LI to L2 was influenced by semantic manipulations, whereas translation from L2 to LI was not.”

“Alternatively, since L2 acquisition in late bilinguals is mediated through L1 translation processes and hence, mediated through semantic processing (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) bilingualism may drive this region more and hence induce increased GMV.”

“From a neurolinguistic perspective, bilinguals possess an intermixed lexical and morphosyntactic organization (Golestani et al., 2006; Gollan, Montoya, Fennema-Notestine, & Morris, 2005; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“These two manipulations were critical: the cognate effect (that is, the difference in processing time and/or errors between cognates and non-cognates) is often thought to indicate that bilingual’s two languages are simultaneously activated (Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Dijkstra et al., 1999; Macizo and Bajo, 2006); wherea…”

“Successive versions of this model, called Revised Hierarchy Models (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll & De Groot, 1997), suggest that links between the lexicons and the common store, as well as the links between the lexicons themselves, have differential strength depending on the stages of bilingual fluency (Heredia, 1997.”

“In research by experimental psycholinguists on the mental lexicons of bilinguals, on the other hand, an impressive amount of data has been gathered (cf. Chen and Leung 1989; Jin 1990; Sánchez Casas et al. 1992; de Groot and Nas 1991; de Groot 1992, 1993; Kroll and Stewart 1994).”

“Evidence from pairedassociate learning and translation studies suggests that learners fi nd it easier to link unknown words with known words than the other way around (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ; Mondria & Wiersma, 2004 ; Webb, 2008 ).”

“Experiment 1 replicated the categorical semantic blocking effect repeatedly observed by Damian and colleagues (Belke et al., 2005; Damian & Als, 2005; Damian et al., 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“Evidence for this claim comes from the observation that the blocking effect fails to emerge when objects have to be semantically categorized with a manual response rather than overtly named (Damian et al., 2001), nor does it appear when words, instead of objects, are named (see also Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ).”

“A bilingual speaker learns words in an L2 by forming new links with extant vocabulary and semantic knowledge in the first language (L1) (Kroll and Stewart, 1994), and this increased vocabulary learning induces neurostructural changes in bilingual speakers (Grogan et al., 2012; Mechelli et al.,…”

“THE SEPARATE STORAGE MODEL postulates two separate language-specific representational systems.”

“Refractory effects in picture naming latencies for healthy participants have also been accounted for in these terms (Belke, Meyer, & Damian, 2005; Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Maess, Friederici, Damian, Meyer, & Levelt, 2002).”

“This asymmetric connection, as described above, was also supported by data came from studies focus in investigating the effect of translation from a first language to a second language (Keatly, Spinks, & DeGelder, 1990; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“This assumption is consistent with most models of bilingual language processing (e.g. the Concept Mediation Model of Potter, So, Von Eckhardt and Feldman (1984); the Distributed Feature Model of De Groot (1992); the Revised Hierarchical Model of Kroll and Stewart (1994)).”

“Second language acquisition may initially be determined by a unidirectional influence: from L1 to L2 (Jiang, 2000; Kroll & Curley, 1988; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Malt & Sloman, 2003).”

“Studies investigating lexical development have therefore attempted to establish differences in the bilingual lexicon between learners at different levels of proficiency (Altarriba & Mathis, 1997; De Groot & Hoeks, 1995; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“A strong, stable, one-to-one connection between a concept and its L1 form needs to give way to a one-to-two connection between concept and both the L1 form and L2 form (c.f. Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, Von Ec- kardt, & Feldman, 1984).”

“The relevance of proficiency would be in agreement with some predictions of one of the most influential models of the organisation of the mental lexicon in bilinguals, the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…of translation equivalents, form overlap has been shown to affect bilingual language performance on a variety of tasks, including translation (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994), word naming (e.g., Schwartz, Kroll, & Diaz, 2001), picture naming (e.g., Costa, Caramazza, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2000), and…”

“Such finding is inconsistent with the Revised Hierarchical Model of bilingual memory (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), which proposes that L1 and L2 are presented in separate lexicons that are asymmetrically connected to the semantic system.”

“Unsurprisingly, novice speakers often access native-language words for objects immediately, even when the foreign word is desired (Colomé, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; see Fig.”

“Kroll & Stewart , 1994 ) , however this facilitation does not appear or becomes to interference when the task involves reading words ( e . g .”

“That is, given that hierarchical models (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994) can shed light on the representation of words that share translation equivalents and that other distributed models (e.g., de Groot, 1993) describe representation for other word types as well, the use of different word classes in…”

“Laufer and Aviad-Levitzky (2017) found that both meaning recognition and meaning recall vocabulary measures correlated with reading scores at .”

“In a series of articles, Kroll and colleagues (Kroll & de Groot, 1997; Kroll & Stewart, 1994) developed a model of bilingual memory (see Figure 1) that can explain a broad range of findings (for reviews, see Kroll, 1993; Kroll & de Groot, 1997).”

“…effects arise when speakers name pictures in the context of naming other pictures from the same semantic field, relative to naming pictures in the context of other pictures from different semantic fields (semantic context effects; Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“One should note here that some psycholinguistic models suggest the existence of stronger lexical links in the L2-L1 direction than in the L1-L2 direction (see the Revised Hierarchical Model by Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“Lexical and syntactic representations in bilinguals Substantial evidence suggests that bilinguals represent their two vocabularies in a single interconnected lexicon (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“In addition, research on lexical retrieval in bilinguals (e.g., Kroll and Curley, 1988; Kroll and Stewart, 1994) suggests that such learners access words in the second language lexicon through their links to words in the native lexicon.”

“Kroll and Stewart (1994) tested these hypotheses by having bilinguals translate words that were presented in semantically blocked (e.g., arm, head, leg) and randomly mixed (e.g., shirt, sink, apple) lists.”

“Bilingual researchers generally assume that translating from L2 to L1 is the easier translation direction, because during initial learning, L2 words may be learned as direct translations of L1 words (Kroll and Stewart, 1994).”

“Thus, the present findings give empirical support to a proficiency hierarchical model of bilingual memory in which highly proficient bilinguals have access to shared conceptual/semantic store for the two languages (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll & Tokowicz, 2001, 2005).”

“Because La Heij et al.’s participants were Dutch–English bilinguals very similar to those used in the Kroll and Stewart (1994) study, it is unlikely that the nature of the participants’ bilingualism or the nature of the two languages can account for the observed differences.”

“…studies have shown that bilinguals activate their 2 languages even in situations where they are required to use only 1 (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2007; Colomé, 2001; Dijkstra, 2005; Hoshino & Thierry, 2011; Ju & Luce, 2004; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Macizo, Bajo, & Martı́n, 2010; Spivey & Marian, 1999).”

“For example, evidence suggests that as proficiency levels change, so do the organization and processing of the two languages (e.g. Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“Like Kroll and Stewart (1994), Schneider et al. (2002) also included a manipulation of semantic blocking to determine whether contextual interference might produce a desirable difficulty in learning.”

“The Revised Hierarchical Model of bilingual memory (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) explains asymmetries in translation performance, as well as other phenomena such as reduced semantic blocking effects in L2 in terms of the reduced “strength” of links between L2 words and conceptual representations.”

“Research on foreign language learning suggests that such a direct connection is only formed after a very long learning period, as only very experienced or fluent speakers of a second language appear to have this direct connection available (Chen & Leung, 1989; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…observations challenge a common view of concrete noun pairs as translation equivalents in the bilingual lexicon (e.g., De Groot, 1992, 1993, 2002; Kroll & Stewart, 1994) and suggest that naming patterns for concrete objects present an important domain for the study of cross-linguistic influence.”

“…on the question of whether bilingual speakers have two separate lexicons that can be accessed independently, or one lexicon containing words from both languages (Costa, Miozzo, & Caramazza, 1999; Francis, 1999; Heredia, 1997; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, von Eckhardt, & Feldman, 1984).”

“In the so-called hierarchical model (Kroll and Stewart, 1994), words in the two languages (L1 and L2) generally have separate representations at the lexical level, but at least partially shared representations at the conceptual level.”

“Such a special status can be envisaged within the theoretical framework provided by the revised hierarchical model (RHM; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), combined with the parallel activation account of cognate effects proposed in Figure 1.”

“The Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM, hereafter; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll & Tokowicz, 2001, 2005) proposes the existence of asymmetric links between the two translation directions.”

“Belke, Meyer, and Damian (2005) used a semantic blocking paradigm, in which speakers repeatedly named sets of objects, which either belonged to the same semantic category (e.g., duck, snake, mouse, horse) or to different categories (duck, chair, vest, car; see also Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ).”

“Such mediated access is analogous to lexical mediation (the word association hypothesis) assumed for early stages of L2 vocabulary acquisition (cf. Hall & Ecke, 2003; Jiang, 2000; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, Von Eckardt, & Feldman, 1984).”

“Learning in this way can be highly effective in the short term, but might result in the so-called ‘ parasitic ’ L2-on-L1 representation (Hernandez, Li & MacWhinney, 2005) or stronger L2-to-L1 links (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“Translational or lexical links across languages are thought to reflect links where learners have an associative connection between an L1 word to an L2 word developed in the language learning process (e.g., in the revised hierarchical model or RHM of Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“Cognitive psychologists have proposed two models to understand the lexical access and store of words in bilingual participants (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…production (here, of the target language) is harder than language perception (of the source language; e.g. Snodgrass, 1993; Paradis, 1994) and that word translation has been argued to be harder from the stronger language to the weaker language than vice versa (e.g. Kroll and Stewart, 1994).”

“The asymmetry in the excitatory connections at the lexical level is supported by the fact that backward translation (L2-L1) is performed faster than forward translation (L1–L2) (e.g. Kroll and Stewart, 1994).”

“These results are consistent with those of Lieberth and Gamble (1991) and Campbell et al.”

“It is possible that some of the participants relied on word associations between the languages to retrieve semantic properties for words in the second language (see also Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”