Frequency effects in monolingual and bilingual natural reading

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Neuroscience

Background:

• The frequency effect (FE) in reading, where more frequent words are processed faster, is well-established in monolinguals.
• Understanding the FE in bilinguals is crucial for models of language processing and acquisition.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically investigate the monolingual and bilingual frequency effect (FE) during natural reading.
• To compare the FE in native language (L1) and second language (L2) for unbalanced bilinguals and monolinguals.
• To examine the influence of L1 and L2 proficiency on the FE.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of single fixation durations on content words during natural reading of a novel.
• Comparison of reading behavior between monolinguals and unbalanced bilinguals.
• Statistical analysis of the frequency effect in relation to language proficiency.

Main Results:

• Monolinguals and bilinguals exhibited similar FE sizes in their L1.
• Bilinguals showed a significantly larger FE in their L2 compared to their L1.
• FE size decreased with increasing L1 proficiency but was unaffected by L2 proficiency.

Conclusions:

• Bilingual reading behavior is consistent with an integrated mental lexicon where lexical entrenchment is primarily determined by language exposure.
• No qualitative differences in language processing are necessary to explain reading behavior across monolinguals and bilinguals.
• Individual vocabulary size and language exposure influence the accuracy of word frequencies, impacting FE size similarly for all participants.