The role of language context in native language reading: selective vs. non-selective access in readings of interlingual homographs

Abstract

A large body of recent psycholinguistic research has focused on lexical retrieval as a selective vs. non-selective process. Much of the early research has examined this phenomenon by presenting words in isolation, or more recently in second language sentence context. Only more recently has research placed more emphasis on how bilinguals are affected by the knowledge of multiple languages in native language processing. Cognitive changes are described to take place as a result of being multilingual (Van Assche, Duyck, Hartsuiker, & Diependaele, 2009). The goal of the current study was to shed further light on how second language knowledge can affect native language reading. This was achieved by observing native language reading behaviour of semantically neutral sentences that incorporated interlingual homographs (false friends), while eye-movements were recorded. These words can cause lexical ambiguity and can be compared to polysemous words in the monolingual domain. Results showed, however, that reading did not differ by eye-tracking measures for the interlingual homographs and control words.