Open AccessInterference and Inhibition in Bilingual Language Comprehension: Evidence from Polish-English Interlingual Homographs
Author(s) -
Joanna Durlik,
Jakub Szewczyk,
Marek Muszyński,
Zofia Wodniecka
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0151430
Subject(s) - linguistics , comprehension , interference (communication) , neuroscience of multilingualism , psychology , computer science , biology , philosophy , telecommunications , channel (broadcasting)
The main goal of the present study was to explore the involvement of inhibition in resolution of cross-language activation in bilingual comprehension and a possible modulatory effect of L2 proficiency. We used a semantic relatedness judgment task in L2 English that included Polish-English interlingual homographs and English translations of the Polish homographs’ meanings. Based on previous studies using the same paradigm, we expected a strong homograph interference and inhibition of the homographs’ Polish meanings translations. In addition, we predicted that participants with lower L2 proficiency would experience greater interference and stronger inhibitory effects. The reported results confirm a strong homograph interference effect. In addition, our results indicate that the scope of inhibition generalized from the homograph’s irrelevant meaning to a whole semantic category, indicating the flexibility of the inhibitory mechanisms. Contrary to our expectations, L2 proficiency did not modulate the effects of interference and inhibition, possibly due to a relatively low variability in proficiency within our participant sample.