Cognitive Processes in Bilinguals

拟议研究的目标是使用双语作为工具来阐明作为记忆和语言之间界面的基本认知过程。由于双语者通常至少有两个词可用于任何给定的概念，一个在他们的语言，他们选择合适的词说话的过程提供了一个有用的工具，研究跨认知系统的语言生产和竞争。最近的研究表明，双语者理解和产生两种语言中的单词的方式表明，两种语言在某种程度上总是活跃的。那么，双语者是如何在大多数时间里用预期的语言说话的呢？计划中的研究的具体重点是检查的因素，调节发生的竞争时，双语的两种语言是活跃的。这些实验有两个目的。一是确定引起跨语言竞争的条件。每个实验都涉及第一语言（L1），第二语言（L2）或两种语言直接相互竞争的混合条件下的口语产生。实验的第二个目的是确定调节每种语言活动的因素。这些因素被假设为包括外部线索，用于信号的双语的两种语言之一，以及内部注意力的功能，以控制从无意的语言激活的后果的策略。这项工作的结果将有具体的影响模型的双语语言处理，但也将提供重要的限制了解的方式，熟练的性能控制。

The goal of the proposed research is to use the bilingual as a vehicle to illuminate basic cognitive processes that serve as the interface between memory and language. Because bilinguals typically have at least two words available for any given concept, one in each of their languages, the process by which they select the appropriate word to speak provides a useful tool for investigating language production and competition across cognitive systems. Recent research on the way in which bilinguals understand and produce words in their two languages suggests that both languages are always active to some degree. How then do bilinguals manage to speak words in the intended language most of the time? The specific focus of the planned research is to examine the factors that modulate the competition that occurs when the bilingual's two languages are active. The experiments have two aims. One is to identify the conditions that give rise to cross-language competition. Each of the proposed experiments involves spoken language production in the first language (L1), the second language (L2), or under mixed conditions in which the two languages are directly competing with one another. A second aim of the proposed experiments is to identify the factors that modulate the activity of each language. These factors are hypothesized to include external cues that serve to signal one of the bilingual's two languages as well as internal attentional strategies that function to control the consequences of activation from the unintended language. The results of this work will have specific implications for models of bilingual language processing but will also provide important constraints for understanding the way in which skilled performance is controlled.