Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Psycholinguistic Study of Native Language Constraints on Speaking Words in a Second Language

在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，星野纪子将在朱迪思·克罗尔（Judith Kroll）博士的指导下，为她的博士论文收集双语口语生产任务的数据。这项研究将考察支持双语者正确选择他们打算使用的语言的能力的认知过程。目前关于双语者口语生产的研究大多集中在两种语言使用相同罗马字母的双语者身上。对于这些双语者来说，有证据表明，即使个人打算只说一种语言，两种语言都是活跃的。本研究的问题是，对于两种语言不共享同一文字的双语者，是否会观察到两种语言的相同平行活动。在一系列的六个实验中，我们将通过比较日语-英语和西班牙-英语双语者在三个口语生产任务中的表现来检验这个问题。一组实验使用快速图片命名任务来询问当图片具有跨语言的同源名称时，通常在同文字双语者身上观察到的语音促进是否也会在不同文字双语者身上观察到。第二组实验考察了当双语者在用第二语言命名图片时出现母语中的干扰词时，对图片命名的干扰程度。第三组实验考察了这两组双语者的语言转换表现。在计划的实验中，将比较两组双语者在母语环境中的表现和在第二语言环境中的表现。另外一组与语言无关的测量方法将评估这些实验结果在多大程度上受到个体在规划口语表达时分配认知资源能力差异的影响。这个研究项目有许多更广泛的含义。它将提供关于多语言的重要基础知识，这将为当今社会的教育问题提供信息，在当今社会，许多学习者在童年早期阶段就面临着习得第二语言的任务。研究的重点是影响言语规划的语言和认知因素，这将为如何熟练掌握第二语言提供重要的新信息。这项研究还将有助于培养越来越多样化的认知科学家群体，包括本科生，其中许多人本身就是双语的，并将促进国际科学合作。

With National Science Foundation support, Ms. Noriko Hoshino will collect data on spoken production tasks in bilinguals for her doctoral dissertation, under the direction of Dr. Judith Kroll. This research will examine the cognitive processes that support bilinguals' ability to correctly choose the language in which they intend to speak. Much of the current research on spoken production in bilinguals has focused on bilinguals whose two languages share the same Roman alphabet. For these bilinguals, the evidence suggests that both languages are active even when the individual intends to speak one language alone. The question in the present research is whether the same parallel activity of the two languages will be observed for bilinguals whose two languages do not share the same script. In a series of six experiments, this issue will be examined by comparing the performance of Japanese-English and Spanish-English bilinguals on three spoken production tasks. One set of experiments uses a speeded picture-naming task to ask whether the phonological facilitation typically observed for same-script bilinguals when pictures have cognate names across languages will also be observed for different-script bilinguals. A second set of experiments investigates the magnitude of interference in picture naming when distractor words in the bilinguals' native language are presented during picture naming in the second language. A third set of experiments examines language switching performance for these two groups of bilinguals. Across the planned experiments, the performance of speakers from these two groups will be compared for bilinguals living in a native-language context vs. those immersed in a second language environment. An additional set of language-independent measures will assess the degree to which the results of these experiments are affected by individual differences in the ability to allocate cognitive resources in planning spoken utterances.This research project has a number of broader implications. It will contribute important foundational knowledge about multilingualism that will inform educational issues in a society in which many learners are faced with the task of acquiring a second language past the earliest stages of childhood. The focus in the proposed research on the linguistic and cognitive factors that influence speech planning will provide crucial new information about how skilled oral proficiency in a second language is accomplished. The research will also contribute to the training of an increasingly diverse group of cognitive scientists by including undergraduate students, many of whom are bilingual themselves, and will foster international scientific collaboration.