Biliteracy and acquisition of novel written words: the impact of phonological conflict between L1 and L2 scripts.

The acquisition of new orthographic representations is a rapid and accurate process in proficient monolingual readers. The present study used biliterate and bialphabetic population to address the impact of phonological inconsistencies across the native (L1) and second (L2) alphabets. Naming latencies were collected from 50 Russian-English biliterates through a reading-aloud task with familiar and novel word forms repeated across 10 blocks. There were three Script conditions: (1) native Cyrillic, (2) non-native Roman, and (3) Ambiguous (with graphically identical, but phonologically inconsistent graphemes shared by both alphabets). Our analysis revealed the main effect of Script on both reading and orthographic learning: naming latencies during training were longer for the ambiguous stimuli, particularly for the novel ones. Nonetheless, novel word forms in the ambiguous condition approached the latencies for the familiar words along the exposures, although this effect was faster in the phonologically consistent trials. Post-training tests revealed similarly successful performance patterns for previously familiar and newly trained forms, indicating successful rapid acquisition of the latter. Furthermore, we found the highest free recall rates for the ambiguous stimuli. Overall, our results indicate that phonological inconsistency initially interferes with the efficiency of novel word encoding. Nevertheless, it does not prevent efficient attribution of orthographic representations; instead, the knowledge of two distinct alphabets supports a more efficient learning and a better memory for ambiguous stimuli via enhancing their encoding and retrieval.

Effects of Visual Priming and Event Orientation on Word Order Choice in Russian Sentence Production.

Existing research shows that distribution of the speaker's attention among event's protagonists affects syntactic choice during sentence production. One of the debated issues concerns the extent of the attentional contribution to syntactic choice in languages that put stronger emphasis on word order arrangement rather than the choice of the overall syntactic frame. To address this, the current study used a sentence production task, in which Russian native speakers were asked to verbally describe visually perceived transitive events. Prior to describing the target event, a visual cue directed the participants' attention to the location of either the agent or the patient of the subsequently presented visual event. In addition, we also manipulated event orientation (agent-left vs. agent-right) as another potential contributor to syntactic choice. The number of patient-initial sentences was the dependent variable compared between conditions. First, the obtained results replicated the effect of visual cueing on the word order in Russian language: more patient-initial sentences in patient cued condition. Second, we registered a novel effect of event orientation: Russian native speakers produced more patient-initial sentences after seeing events developing from right to left as opposed to left-to-right events. Our study provides new evidence about the role of the speaker's attention and event orientation in syntactic choice in language with flexible word order.

Motor (but not auditory) attention affects syntactic choice.

Understanding the determinants of syntactic choice in sentence production is a salient topic in psycholinguistics. Existing evidence suggests that syntactic choice results from an interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic factors, and a speaker's attention to the elements of a described event represents one such factor. Whereas multimodal accounts of attention suggest a role for different modalities in this process, existing studies examining attention effects in syntactic choice are primarily based on visual cueing paradigms. Hence, it remains unclear whether attentional effects on syntactic choice are limited to the visual modality or are indeed more general. This issue is addressed by the current study. Native English participants viewed and described line drawings of simple transitive events while their attention was directed to the location of the agent or the patient of the depicted event by means of either an auditory (monaural beep) or a motor (unilateral key press) lateral cue. Our results show an effect of cue location, with participants producing more passive-voice descriptions in the patient-cued conditions. Crucially, this cue location effect emerged in the motor-cue but not (or substantially less so) in the auditory-cue condition, as confirmed by a reliable interaction between cue location (agent vs. patient) and cue type (auditory vs. motor). Our data suggest that attentional effects on the speaker's syntactic choices are modality-specific and limited to the visual and motor, but not the auditory, domain.