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Context Effects in Bilingual Sentence Processing: Task Specificity

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Book cover Methods in Bilingual Reading Comprehension Research

Part of the book series: The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series ((BMBBS,volume 1))

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of bilingualism research on visual word recognition in sentence context and relates this work to task-specific context factors. Many studies examining bilingual word recognition out-of-context have shown that words from both languages become activated when reading in one language (i.e., language-nonselective lexical access). A recent research line investigated whether presentation of words in a sentence context, providing a language cue and/or semantic constraint to restrict lexical access to words in the target language, modulates this language-nonselective activation. Recent lexical decision, translation, naming, and eye-tracking studies suggest that the language of the sentence context cannot restrict lexical access to words of the target language. Eye-tracking studies revealed that semantic constraint of a sentence does not necessarily restrict language-nonselective access, although there is evidence that it has a relatively late effect, and that it affects language-nonselective activation in lexical decision, translation, and naming studies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Henry Dunantlaan 2, Ghent, 9000, Belgium

    Eva Van Assche Ph.D., Wouter Duyck Ph.D. & Robert J. Hartsuiker Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Eva Van Assche Ph.D.
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  2. Wouter Duyck Ph.D.
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  3. Robert J. Hartsuiker Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Eva Van Assche Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M International University, Dept. of Psychology and Communication, Laredo, Texas, USA

    Roberto R. Heredia

  2. University at Albany, State University of New York, Department of Psychology, Albany, New York, USA

    Jeanette Altarriba

  3. Texas A&M International University, Dept. of Psychology and Communication, Laredo, Texas, USA

    Anna B. Cieślicka

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Van Assche, E., Duyck, W., Hartsuiker, R.J. (2016). Context Effects in Bilingual Sentence Processing: Task Specificity. In: Heredia, R., Altarriba, J., Cieślicka, A. (eds) Methods in Bilingual Reading Comprehension Research. The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series, vol 1. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2993-1_2

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