Abstract
This study tested bilingual subjects' interaction of knowledge of both languages in comprehension. Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals heard 36 sentences, all spoken in English. Twelve were normal English sentences, 12 contained Spanish word order, and 12 contained word-for-word translations of Spanish idioms. The dependent measure was performance on a phoneme-monitoring task; subjects pressed a button when they heard a particular phoneme within each sentence. Immediately following each sentence, subjects wrote down as much of that sentence as they could recall. Results showed that bilingual subjects pressed the button equally quickly for all sentences, but monolinguals were faster for control sentences than for idiom-translations, which was interpreted to mean that a knowledge of Spanish helped the bilinguals in processing the test items semantically.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Dalrymple-Alford, E. C., and Aamiry, A. (1969). Language and category clustering in bilingual free recall.J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 8:762–768
Dillon, R. F., McCormack, P. D., Petrusic, W. M., Cook, M., and LaFleur, L. (1973). Release from proactive interference in compound and coordinate bilinguals.Bull. Psychon. Soc. 2:293–294.
Foss, D. J., and Jenkins, C. M. (1973). Some effects of context on the comprehension of ambiguous sentences.J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 12:577–589.
Kintsch, W., and Kintsch, E. (1969). Interlingual interference and memory processes.J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 8:16–19.
Kolers, P. A. (1966). Reading and talking bilingually.Am. J. Psychol. 79:357–376.
Kolers, P. (1974). Remembering trivia.Lang. Speech 17:324–336.
Lambert, W. E., Ignatow, M., and Krauthamer, M. (1968). Bilingual organization in free recall.J. Verb. Learm. Verb. Behav. 7:207–214.
Liepmann, D., and Saegert, J. (1974). Language tagging in bilingual free recall.J. Exp. Psychol. 103:1137–1141.
Lopez, M., and Young, R. K. (1974). The linguistic interdependence of bilinguals.J. Exp. Psychol. 102:981–983.
Macnamara, J. (1967). The bilingual's linguistic performance—a psychological overview.J. Soc. Issues 23:58–77.
Macnamara, J. (1969). How can one measure the extent of a person's bilingual proficiency? In Kelly, L. G. (ed.),Description and Measurement of Bilingualism, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Macnamara, J., and Kushnir, S. (1971). Linguistic independence of bilinguals.J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 10:480–487.
Miller, J. D. (1972).1,000 Spanish Idioms, Brigham Young University Press, Provo, Utah.
Nott, C. R., and Lambert, W. E. (1968). Free recall of bilinguals.J. Verb. Learn. Verb. Behav. 7:1065–1071.
Rose, R. G., and Carroll, J. F. (1974). Free recall of a mixed-language list.Bull. Psychon. Soc. 3:267–268.
Rose, R. G., Rose, P. R., King, N., and Perez, A. (1975). Bilingual memory for related and unrelated sentences.J. Exp. Psychol.: Human Learn. Memory. 1:599–606.
Saegert, J., Hamayan, E., and Ahmar, H. (1975). Memory for language of input in polyglots.J. Exp. Psychol.: Human Learn. Memory. 1:607–613.
Tulving, E., and Colotla, V. A. (1970). Free recall of trilingual lists.Cog. Psychol. 1:86–98.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Blair, D., Harris, R.J. A test of interlingual interaction in comprehension by bilinguals. J Psycholinguist Res 10, 457–467 (1981). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067169
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01067169