Does bilingualism hamper lexical access in speech production?
In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingualism may cause a linguistic disadvantage in lexical access even for bilinguals' first and dominant language. To this purpose, we conducted a picture naming experiment comparing the performance of monolinguals and highly-proficient, L1-dominant bilinguals. The results revealed that monolinguals name pictures faster than bilinguals, both when bilinguals perform picture naming in their first and dominant language and when they do so in their weaker second language. This is the first time it has been demonstrated that bilinguals show a naming disadvantage in their L1 in comparison to monolingual speakers.
GRNC, Parc Científic, Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain.
Iva
I
Ivanova
Albert
A
Costa
D000328:Adult; D003657:Decision Making / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D019303:Multilingualism; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D012660:Semantics; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014825:Vocabulary