You Can Stand Under My Umbrella: Cognitive Load in Second-Language Reading

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• Second-language (L2) processing often exhibits cognitive disfluency, similar to disruptions from perceptual challenges like visual degradation.
• The relationship between cognitive disfluency in L2 and perceptual disfluency remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if cognitive disfluency in L2 mirrors perceptual disfluency using Virtual Reality.
• To examine the effects of simulated adverse weather and visual masking on bilingual language processing.

Main Methods:

• Employed Virtual Reality to simulate sunny vs. rainy weather conditions and apply visual masking.
• Spanish-English bilinguals performed a language decision task, identifying Spanish (L1) and English (L2) words.
• Measured reaction times under different perceptual conditions.

Main Results:

• Visual masking significantly increased reaction times, particularly for L1 words, reducing the native language advantage.
• Rainy weather conditions slowed responses across both languages, indicating general environmental disfluency.
• A significant interaction between language and masking demonstrated distinct cognitive effects for different disfluency types.

Conclusions:

• Cognitive disfluency in L2 processing is not equivalent to perceptual disfluency; they have differential impacts.
• Virtual Reality effectively manipulated environmental variables to study bilingual processing.
• Perceptual and linguistic challenges interact uniquely to influence bilingual language processing.