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

“To address this discrepancy, we may refer to the theoretical framework developed by Kroll and Stewart [16], which suggests a direct conceptual link for high proficiency bilinguals, whereas a word-mediated, indirect link for low proficiency bilinguals (see Introduction).”

“Critically, the assumption of the DRM is that L1–L2 and L2–L1 translation priming are quantitatively rather than qualitatively different as implied in other models (Jiang & Forster, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Witzel & Forster, 2012).”

“…shifts with increases in language proficiency have been documented for bilinguals’ lexical performance (e.g., Daller, van Hout, & Treffers-Daller, 2003; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Treffers-Daller, 2009) and bilinguals’ working memory skills (e.g., Service, Simola, Metsanheimo, & Maury, 2002).”

“…1990) or a semantically homogeneous composition of objects in the semantic blocking paradigm (e.g., Belke, Meyer, & Damian, 2005; Damian, Viglocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), slows down naming latencies compared to unrelated distractors or heterogeneous blocks of unrelated objects.”

“For instance, the speed and accuracy when translating cognate words is much higher than when translating noncognate words, both from L1 to L2 and L2 to L1 (de Groot, 1992b; Sánchez-Casas, Davis and Garcı́a-Albea, 1992; de Groot et al., 1994; Kroll and Stewart, 1994).”

“…and Williams, 2001) and have been widely adopted in models of bilingual language processing (Potter, So, von Eckardt and Feldman, 1984; de Bot, 1992; Kroll and Stewart, 1994; La Heij, Hooglander, Kerling and van der Velden, 1996; Poulisse, 1997; Green, 1998; Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot and…”

“Many current theories of bilingual processing and memory representation, however, assume that representations of translation equivalents are integrated to some degree (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, Von Eckhart, & Feldman, 1984).”

“It is possible that because the bilinguals in the current study are highly proficient, they relied less on lexical-level connections (in accordance with the Revised Hierarchical Model; Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ), and were thus less influenced by the inhibitory lexical connections.”

“One might expect that the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) of bilingual representations (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) could explain this priming asymmetry.”

“For example, the Revised Hierarchical (RH) model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) postulates that words are stored in separate lexical memory systems, whereas concepts are stored in an abstract memory system common to both languages.”

“Dutch–English participants have been studied extensively (e.g. Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Dijkstra, Van Jaarsveld and Ten Brinke, 1998; Van Hell and De Groot, 1998) and are usually considered to be very proficient in English.”

“However, in both tasks, once meaning is specified, the subsequentprocess of lexicalization is thought to be similar (but see Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“With respect to single-word production, a similar paradigm has been used by Kroll and Stewart (1994) to investigate the organization of the bilingual lexicon.”

“Newly learned L2 words are typically mapped onto their L1 translation (Clenton, 2015; Jiang, 2002; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll, Van Hell, Tokowicz, & Green, 2010).”

“As Kroll and Stewart (1994) argue, words encoded from different learning contexts may represent different conceptual associations between word phonemes and their meanings.”

“However, it should be noted that not all expressive tasks give rise to semantic facilitation (eg, Crutch & Warrington, 2001 ; Damian et al, 2001 ; Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, & Cole-Virtue, 2006 ; Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ; Schnur et al, 2006 ).”

“Translating from L1 into L2 is slower and more prone to errors than translating from L2 into L1 (e.g. Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Kroll, Michael, Tokowicz and Dufour, 2002), indicating larger familiarity and accessibility when L1 is involved.”

“Hence, models such as the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM; Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ), or the Bilingual Interactive Activation model (BIA; Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998 ), provided a description of how exactly one's native language (L1) and languages learned later in life (L2) conceptual and lexical links constantly intera…”

“argued that this is consistent with Kroll and Stewart’s (1994) revised hierarchical model of bilingual lexical representations, which claims that L2 words are less strongly connected to conceptual representations than L1 words are.”

“Indeed, an early model of bilingual lexical representation, the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM; Kroll and Stewart, 1994) predicts that a reliance on lexical associations between L2 and L1 is a central feature of language usage during second language learning.”

“Over time and as proficiency increases, direct links from L2 forms to concepts can be created, allowing bilinguals to bypass the L1 forms (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Wang, 2007).”

“Indeed, a number of studies provide evidence that suggests that picture naming and translation share many critical features (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, von Eckhardt, & Feldman, 1984).”

“According to the theoretical perspective, the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), the connections between the concept and labels vary based on language exposure and dominance.”

“For example, we suggest that code-blend facilitation for ASL occurs because retrieval of the more accessible English word facilitates access to its ASL translation, perhaps via lexical links between languages (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“As expected, given their self-ratings, and prior research on reading words aloud (Kroll and Stewart, 1994; La Heij, Hooglander, Kerling and van der Velden, 1996), participants responded more quickly to words in their native language, German, than to words in English [800ms (142) vs.”

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“It is often assumed that this backward translation task, like picture naming, is conceptually mediated (Bloem & La Heij, 2003; see, however, Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“A number of issues remain to be resolved regarding how such common conceptual representations are accessed (eg, directly in both languages or mediated via the more proficient language; Potter et al , 1984 ; Kroll and Stewart, 1994 ).”

“In contrast, translations should have very different lexical information but share the same semantic information (Altarriba & Mathis, 1997; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“This article first described the revised hierarchical model (RHM), a framework that captures, at lexical level, the consequences of late L2 acquisition for creating mappings between words and concepts.”

“They are assumed to share the same concepts or semantic features, at least those of concrete nouns (see the Revised Hierarchical Model by Kroll and Stewart, 1994; and the Distributed Feature Model by De Groot, 1992; and De Groot et al., 1994).”

“There is consensus in the literature that translation from the dominant to the nondominant language is concept mediated in fluent bilinguals (Chen & Leung, 1989; Kroll & Curley, 1988; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter et al., 1984; Sholl et al., 1995).”

“For adult second language learners, the Revised Hierarchical model (Kroll and Stewart 1994) allows for a shift from lexical mediation from L1 to L2 initially to conceptual mediation with increasing ̄uency.”

“Kroll and Stewart’s [107, 108] model of second language learning makes the further distinction between declarative”

“…learning generally lag behind (or are more difficult/slower to acquire than) receptive abilities, it is noteworthy that retrieval practice produced especially robust gains in the more difficult task (i.e., from meaning to L2 phonology; e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Schneider, Healy, & Bourne, 2002).”

“Our finding that order of acquisition is less relevant than proficiency in determining the amount of right hemisphere and posterior activity during early encoding and especially late semantic processing stages is important because it shows that models such as Kroll and colleagues’ RHM [12] must include PLoS ONE | www.…”

“Contrary to the predictions of RHM (Kroll and Stewart, 1994), the L1–L2 translation direction (503 ms) was slightly faster than the L2–L1 direction (551 ms).”

“…P. Li ⁄ Cognitive Science 33 (2009) bilingual representation takes the form of a single, shared lexical storage or separate, distinct storages in the mental lexicon (Kroll & de Groot, 1997; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, Von Eckhart, & Feldman, 1984; see Kroll & Tokowicz, 2005, for a review).”

“We used both the similarity-rating technique of De Groot and Nas (1991) and a modi®ed version of the translation-elicitation task of Kroll and Stewart (1994).”

“…1998; Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot & Schreuder, 1998; Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2007; Kroll, Bobb & Wodniecka, 2006; Kroll, Sumutka & Schwartz, 2005; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Spivey & Marian, 1999), but we make here an important further suggestion that the competition occurs at the structural level…”

“…during language processing (e.g., Blumenfeld & Marian, 2007; Marian & Spivey, 2003; Perani, Paulesu, Galles, Dupoux, Dehaene, et al., 1998; Weber & Cutler, 2004) and in more elaborate semantic representations established in that language (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Van Hell & De Groot, 1998).”

“In the Revised Hierarchical Model semantic to L1 connections are stronger than semantic to L2 connections.”

“Both findings would be supported by Kroll and Stewart’s (1994) revised hierarchical model of bilingual memory.”

“Cognitive models tend to assume the existence of a single conceptual representation for the two languages, which is linked to two different lexical representations (Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Francis, 1999; Gollan and Kroll, 2001).”

“This notion is supported by studies that have found faster L2-L1 translation than vice versa (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Sholl, Shankaranarayanan, & Kroll, 1995).”

“Experimental psychology experiments have attempted to characterize the relative importance of conceptual mediation and word association in bilingual individuals [7–9].”

“As described by Kroll and Stewart in 1994, more proficient users of their second language can access the meaning of a word in their second language directly whereas less proficient users access the meaning of a word in their second language indirectly, via the first language. Perhaps deaf children can be compared to l…”

“…be more rigorously honed in bilinguals, whose dual linguistic systems constantly compete for selection at varying levels of representation (e.g., phonology, syntax, lexico-semantics, morphology, orthography, pragmatics; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Rodriguez-Fornells, De Diego Balaguer, & Münte, 2006).”

“In addition, some form of the first language experience hypothesis helps to explain findings that first language noun categories play a role in second language noun processing ( Chen & Leung, 1989 ; Kroll & Tokowicz, 2005 ; Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ; Sunderman & Kroll, 2006 ).”

“This model, the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM; Kroll and Stewart 1994, Kroll and Tokowicz 2005) caters for the role of formal pairings and make much (or any) use of the conceptual level.”

“Instead, they rely on the knowledge and the concepts that they have in their L1 (Dijkstra and Van Heuven 2002; Kroll and Stewart 1994).”

“This was also consistent with findings from word translation studies (Kroll and Stewart 1994; Kroll et al. 2002).”

“First, as with unimodal bilinguals, both of the languages of bimodal bilinguals are active and influence language use and processing, even in contexts that only call for one language (Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Kroll et al., 2006; Emmorey et al., 2008b; Shook and Marian, 2012).”

“Most models agree that processing of the second language (L2) is influenced by the native language system (L1) previously acquired (Dijkstra, 2005; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“Under the assumption that the activation of L2 words by their L1 translation equivalents is conceptually mediated (see for evidence Kroll & Stewart, 1994; La Heij, Hooglander, Kerling, & van der Velden, 1996), this 121 The International Journal of Bilingualism Between-language identity effects in…”

“…shown that naming an object can involve competition from other objects of the same semantic category (e.g. Humphreys, Lloyd-Jones, & Fias, 1995; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Levelt, Schriefers, Vorberg, Meyer, Pechmann, & Havinga, 1991; Lupker, 1979; Rosinsk i, 1977; Vitkovitch & Humphreys, 1991;…”

“These effects are predicted in models of bilingual memory which hold that words in the L2 are understood via translation into words in the L1 (Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Kroll and Tokowicz, 2005; Francis, 2005, inter alia).”

“Previously, Kroll and Stewart (1994) had shown a semantic interference effect when bilingual participants were asked not to read the stimulus words but to translate them into their second language.”

“Although becoming fluent in a second language undoubtedly requires a more complex representation of the concepts captured by these phrases, at least initially this mapping between new words and established concepts must guide comprehension (Gonzales, 1999; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Paradis, 1997).”

“Interference is well established in semantically overlapping contexts (Belke, Meyer, & Damian, 2005; Crowther & Martin, 2014; Damian et al., 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Schnur, 2014; Schnur et al., 2009).”

“Any form of translation (implicit or explicit; see, e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ) of the L2 prime word into its L1 equivalent might therefore generate processing conflicts in these conditions, and the likelihood of translating a prime word could well depend on its relatedness to the picture target.”

“Agreeing with earlier studies (Jiang, 2004; Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Yamashita and Jiang, 2010), the results suggest that the L1 influences L2 learners’ comprehension even at higher proficiency levels.”

“This asymmetry has traditionally been attributed to differences in proficiency between L1 and L2 and to differences in the conditions under which each language is acquired (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“The Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) posits that L1-to-L2 translations are mediated conceptually, whereas L2-to-L1 translation takes place directly via lexical links (Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Kroll and Tokowicz, 2005).”

“…has shown that links between second language words and semantic information are established quite early during the learning process (Altarriba & Mathis, 1997; Duyck & Brysbaert, 2001), in contrast with assumptions of earlier models of bilingual language organization (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…and functioning (see, e.g., Aitchison, 1994; De Groot, Dannenburg, & Van Hell, 1994; Hyltenstam, 1988; Kirsner, Smith, Lockhart, King, & Jain, 1984; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; and La Heij, Kerling, & der Velden, 1996), relatively little research has been conducted on the route of L2 lexical…”

“…a semantically homogeneous composition of objects in the semantic blocking paradigm (Belke, Meyer, & Damian, 2005; Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), or the previous experience of naming objects from the same semantic category (Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, & Cole-Virtue,…”

“Shared semantics across languages are assumed by theoretical models of bilingualism (e.g., the Revised Hierarchical Model, Kroll & Stewart, 1994; the BIA+ model, Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002; and Green’s convergence hypothesis, Green, 2003); however, languages map their words onto the conceptual…”

“Forward translations are more difficult because the L1 word activates phonological and semantic information in the L1 that may interfere in retrieving the weaker semantics and phonology in the L2 (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…thus have to continuously monitor their two languages, to assure fluency in speech production in the relevant language while actively inhibiting the interfering and nonrelevant language (Paradis, 1984; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Bialystok, 2001; Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008).”

“A seminal model of bilingual memory, the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), was explicitly developed to explain asymmetries in translation performance by late and L1dominant bilinguals (Kroll et al., 2010).”

“Figure 4B shows the grand aver- age peak latency of the negativity for each electrode that showed a significant negative effect as determined by the cluster-randomization analysis.”

“This is because it would strengthen the notion that the semantic system is shared across languages (e.g., Costa, Santesteban, & Can ˜o, 2005; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Van Hell & De Groot, 1998) and, consequently, damage to this system would lead to comparable lexical dissociations in the two languages.6”

“…including the Bilingual Dual-Coding theory (Pavio & Desrochers, 1980), the Distributed Feature model (De Groot, 1992), the Revised Hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), and more recently, the Sense model (Finkbeiner, Foster, Nicol & Nakamura, 2004; see also Segalowitz & de Almeida, 2002).”