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

“When these results are fit into the context of the extant theoretical framework (Kroll and Stewart, 1994), it is reasoned that for individuals with relative differences in proficiency between the two languages, connections between the more proficient language (e.g. English) and the conceptual…”

“For instance, Kroll and Stewart (1994) manipulated the semantic coherence within word lists that were presented for translation: some lists contained words from a single semantic category (e.g. fruits), whereas other lists contained words from different categories (e.g. fruits, clothes, animals).”

“This assumption was also made in more recent models of bilingualism, such as the word association model, the concept mediation model (Potter, So, Von Eckardt, & Feldman, 1984), and the revised hierarchical model of Kroll and Stewart (1994).”

“Existing theories of bilingual lexical processing, including the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), the bilingual interactive activation model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002), and the inhibitory control model (Green, 1998), all include the feature that associations between words and…”

“The stronger N250 translation priming effect from L2 to L1 than from L1 to L2 in the present study might also be driven by asymmetries in the connection strengths between the word form representations of translation equivalents, as postulated in the RHM (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…repeatedly presented in blocks consisting of semantically homogeneous or heterogeneous objects (e.g., Belke, Meyer, & Damian, 2005; Damian & Als, 2005; Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Schnur, Schwartz, Brecher, & Hodgson, 2006; Vigliocco, Vinson, Damian, & Levelt, 2002).”

“Consistent with the theoretical models discussed earlier in the introduction (particularly the RHM and revised RHM), they highlight that the lower the proficiency in a language, the lower lexical access in that language.”

“Address for Correspondence: Luis Morales, Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Campus de Cartuja s/n, 18071, Granada, Spain luismorales@ugr.es different lexical entries (De Groot, 1993; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“The Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM), developed by Kroll and Stewart (1994), also contains a lexical and a conceptual store.”

“These patterns are consistent with the translation asymmetries observed in previous studies with less balanced bilinguals (Francis et al., 2004; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Sholl et al., 1995).”

“2.1 Parallel activation of the bilingual’s two languages When adults learn a second language past early childhood, the established L1 is thought to influence the ability to access lexical and grammatical information in the newly developing L2 (e.g. Kroll & Stewart, 1994; MacWhinney, 2005).”

“…to theories regarding the cognitive mechanisms involved in language switching and language selection (e.g. for Inhibitory Control, see Green, 1986, 1998; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), it is worth nothing that the majority of this work has relied on production-oriented experimental paradigms.”

“…word selection caused by the repetitive prior retrieval of words from the same semantic category (Belke, Meyer, & Damian, 2005; Damian et al., 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Rahman & Melinger, 2009; although see Janssen, Carreiras, & Barber, 2011; Janssen, Hernández-Cabrera, van der Meij, & Barber,…”

“…with a semantic blocking paradigm in which pictures of objects are named in categorically homogeneous or heterogeneous blocks of trials (e.g., Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Damian et al., 2001; Belke et al., 2005), assuming that this task taps into lexical-semantic processing stages during…”

“Second, given that naming latencies in the semantic blocking task are generally slower for pictures than forword stimuli (e.g., Kroll and Stewart, 1994), onewould expect a later onset of the semantic context effect for pictures than for words, if the effect was occurring at output stages of the…”

“The results extend previous findings that suggest language non- selective access of orthographic information in bilinguals where the languages are different in terms of their phonological and orthographic structures (Lagrou et al., 2011; Thierry & Wu, 2010). Our results expand earlier findings with monolinguals that h…”

“In speech production, cognates are translated faster than non-cognates (Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Christoffels et al., 2006).”

“As schematically represented in Figure 10, inspired by the revised hierarchical model (Kroll and Stewart 1994), I would like to suggest that multilinguals with such highly developed dia-systems – be they due to proficiency in two Romance languages or to proficiency in a Germanic dialect and a…”

“…(see Figure 1): a lexical level, which consists of two distinct and independent lexicons, and a conceptual level, which is shared by the two languages (see, e.g., Kolers, 1966; Kroll, Michael, & Sankaranarayanan, 1998; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, Von Eckardt, & Feldman, 1984).”

“(Kroll and Stewart, 1994) and continue to affect processing even after direct form–meaning connections have been established.”

“The reason is that some more recent studies did not obtain the asymmetry predicted by the RHM (e.g., Christoffels, de Groot, & Kroll, 2006; Christoffels, de Groot, & Waldorp, 2003; de Groot & Poot, 1997; La Heij et al., 1996), most likely due to improved L2 proficiency levels among students.”

“…to account for these effects incorporate some aspect of lexical competition (e.g., Abdel Rahman & Melinger, 2008; Damian & Als, 2005; Dell, Oppenheim, & Kittredge, 2008; Howard et al., 2006; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Oppenheim, Dell, & Schwartz, 2007; Vigliocco et al., 2004). experimental paradigms.”

“Although the order in which the components of the process are active is reversed in lexical access and lexical retrieval, most components are interchangeable (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999).”

“Strengthening competencies in L1 influences learning to read in L2 which in turn promotes linkage between L2 and conceptual knowledge (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Paradis et al., 2011; Perozzi & Sanchez, 1992).”

“In the Revised Hierarchical Model of bilingual language processing, these word-to-word associations are strongest at the onset of L2 learning (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“These findings, and the findings of the current study, are consistent with the hypothesis that semantic representations are shared across languages (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll, Van Hell, Tokowicz, & Green, 2010).”

“To safe-guard against potential individual differences (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Potter, So, von Eckhardt, & Feldman, 1984), we considered log-transformed participants’ months of stay away from Japan (LengthOfStayCanada) as a measure of L2 English proficiency.”

“The semantic blocked naming experiment that Schnur and colleagues conducted was inspired by similar experiments run with unimpaired speakers (e.g., Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994) and individuals with aphasia (McCarthy & Kartsounis, 2000; Wilshire & McCarthy, 2002).”

“Active bilingualism stands out as a good candidate due to its ubiquity in daily life coupled with the fact that both languages are always simultaneously active in the bilingual brain, and this constitutes a sustained, highly engaging mental exercise (e.g., Green, 1998; Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Spivey and Marian, 1999;…”

“With regard to experience, we hypothesized that in keeping with the RHM, the amount of language experience would affect the depth of semantic knowledge, resulting in an asymmetry in semantic depth between a bilingual’s more and less frequently used languages.”

“The majority of current models of bilingual word recognition are framed in an interactive language system, in which words are processed on the basis of their orthographic, semantic, and phonological similarity across languages (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998, 2002; but see Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…DOG, HORSE, LION), they are named more slowly in the neurologically intact adults (Belke, Meyer, & Damian, 2005; Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994) and with more errors in aphasic patients with left frontal lesions (McCarthy & Kartsounis, 2000; Schnur, Schwartz, Brecher, &…”

“The model presented by Kroll originally was termed the " revised hierarchical model " (Kroll, 1994; Kroll & de Groot, 1997; Kroll & Sholl, 1992; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Sholl et al., 1995).”

“Current models of bilingual language processing also agree that multilinguals have a shared conceptual system for both/all of their languages (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Pavlenko, 2009).”

“Quite a few proposals have been offered for this aspect of second-language acquisition (e.g., Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Dijkstra and van Heuven, 2002).”

“As Kroll and Stewart (1994) proposed and several studies have demonstrated (Ferré, SánchezCasas & Guasch, 2006; Guasch, Sánchez-Casas, Ferré & García-Albea, 2008; Talamas, Kroll & Dufour, 1999; Sunderman & Kroll, 2006), one of the most relevant variables modulating access to meaning from L2 words…”

“As research with bilingual adults (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) and children (Bialystok, 1988) has revealed that the cognitive and linguistic consequences of bilingualism are more salient for those bilinguals who are relatively balanced in their proficiency, we only considered balanced bilinguals for the present study.”

“Bilingual lexicon Meaning access L2 learners ERPs a b s t r a c t According to the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), second language (L2) learners initially access the meaning of L2 words via the L1 whereas advanced learners access meaning directly.”

“This effect is commonly assumed to reside at the level of lexical access (see e.g., Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…tradition, studies have observed properties of non-separability in the bilingual system, such as coactivation (e.g., Costa, 2004; De Bot, 2004; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll & Sunderman, 2003; Marian, Spivey & Hirsch, 2003; Weinreich, 1953), and degrees of overlap in representations between…”

“…vs. dependence of language-speci®c lexicons, the relationships between conceptual and lexical representations in bilingualism, and language switching mechanisms (e.g., Schreuder and Weltens, 1993; Kroll and Stewart, 1994; Brysbaert, Van Dyck and Van de Poel, 1999; Meuter and Allport, 1999).”

“Another possibility would be an interpretation in terms of the RHM model (Kroll and Stewart, 1994): L1-L2 translation requires mediation via the L1 translation equivalent, which then leads to the slower responses, especially in bilinguals who are not highly proficient, as is the case of the…”

“Translation direction has also been a variable of interest in the study of word translation because it is often found that translation from L1 to L2 is performed more slowly than translation in the reverse direction (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Sánchez-Casas, Davis & García-Albea, 1992a).”

“For that to occur, interference and competition between the two languages of the bilingual are required (Kroll and Stewart, 1994).”

“…after childhood, both lexical and conceptual connections are active during bilingual word processing, but the strength of the connections or associations differs according to the relative dominance of L1 over L2 (or vice versa) as well as the language proficiency in L2 (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“…if one assumes that L2 translational equivalents are mapped onto the existing semantic representations that also serve L1 (Duyck & Brysbaert, 2004; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Van Hell & De Groot, 1998b), L2 processing should indeed be influenced by L1 AoA, because that measure reflects when the…”

“…L2 processing in nonproficient adult learners posit that words from each language are stored in separate lexicons, with cross-language lexical connections limited to translation equivalents (e.g., Grainger, Midgley, &Holcomb, 2010; Kroll, Van Hell, Tokowicz, & Green, 2010; Kroll & Stewart, 1994).”

“Earlier studies have shown that speakers are slower to name sets of semantically related than unrelated objects (Kroll & Stewart, 1994 ; Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001 ; see also de Zubicaray, McMahon, Eastburn, & Pringle, 2006 ).”

“These diverse findings do not unequivocally support the developmental prediction of the RHM model as far as the issue of proficiency and translation activation is concerned.”

“For example, Kroll and Stewart (1994) argued that faster lexical translation times for L2 1 The terms “L1”, “L2”, “native language”, and “secondary language” are not without problems in the study of bilingualism (Romaine, 1995).”

“This would provide further evidence for the Kroll and Stewart (1994) model whereby L2 words are routed via L1 words in order to connect with a concept.”

“Among the models that have been proposed for bilingual language lexical access, the Revised Hierarchical Model -RHM- (Kroll and Stewart, 1994) proposes that bilinguals access translation equivalents both through concept-mediation and also through direct associative links.”

“The processes in the sight translation task, conducted by students with no experience in professional translation or interpreting, were registered by eye tracker and audio recorder, supplemented by post-task retrospection data.”

“…our production task required learners to translate the target words from their L1 to their L2, whereas in MonteroPerez et al. (2014), learners translated the target words from their L2 to their L1, a skill in which learners are typically faster and more accurate (e.g. Kroll and Stewart 1994).”

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

“BiLex expands on our previously built DISLEX model (Miikkulainen, & Kiran, 2009) that incorporated aspects of the RHM of the organization of the bilingual lexicon (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), to simulate lexical access in healthy bilinguals.”

“…1989; Hantsch, Jescheniak, & Schriefers, 2005; Schriefers, Meyer, & Levelt, 1990) or cyclic blocking paradigm (e.g. Belke, Meyer, & Damian, 2005; Damian & Als, 2005; Damian, Vigliocco, & Levelt, 2001; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Schnur, Schwartz, Brecher, & Hodgson, 2006; Vigliocco et al., 2002).”