Work

Evidence for a bimodal bilingual disadvantage in letter fluency

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: Many bimodal bilinguals are immersed in a spoken language-dominant environment from an early age and, unlike unimodal bilinguals, do not necessarily divide their language use between languages. Nonetheless, early ASL-English bilinguals retrieved fewer words in a letter fluency task in their dominant language compared to monolingual English speakers with equal vocabulary level. This finding demonstrates that reduced vocabulary size and/or frequency of use cannot completely account for bilingual disadvantages in verbal fluency. Instead, retrieval difficulties likely reflect between-language interference. Furthermore, it suggests that the two languages of bilinguals compete for selection even when they are expressed with distinct articulators.

Source: Bilingualism Language and Cognition

DOI: 10.1017/s1366728916000596

Authors: MARCEL R. GIEZEN, KAREN EMMOREY

Institutions: Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, San Diego State University

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funder: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Award: Bimodal Bilingualism