title: Can Faces Prime a Language?
abstract: Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of these languages must be selected on the basis of some cue. The present study investigated whether the face of an interlocutor can serve as such a cue. Spanish-Catalan and Dutch-French bilinguals were first familiarized with certain faces, each of which was associated with only one language, during simulated Skype conversations. Afterward, these participants performed a language production task in which they generated words associated with the words produced by familiar and unfamiliar faces displayed on-screen. When responding to familiar faces, participants produced words faster if the faces were speaking the same language as in the previous Skype simulation than if the same faces were speaking a different language. Furthermore, this language priming effect disappeared when it became clear that the interlocutors were actually bilingual. These findings suggest that faces can prime a language, but their cuing effect disappears when it turns out that they are unreliable as language cues.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University evy.woumans@ugent.be.
authors.forename: Evy
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Woumans
authors.affiliation: Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language (BCBL), San Sebastian, Spain.
authors.forename: Clara D
authors.initials: CD
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental, Clinical, and Health Psychology, Ghent University.
authors.forename: Charlotte
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vanden Bulcke
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Van Assche
authors.affiliation: Center of Brain and Cognition, CBC, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University.
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Hartsuiker
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University.
authors.forename: Wouter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Duyck
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003463:Cues; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D013060:Speech; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: bilingualism; face priming; language cues; lexical access