Bilinguals process incoming words using distributions across both languages.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science
• Linguistics

Background:

• Bilingual language processing differs from monolingual processing due to unique linguistic experiences.
• Code-switching in bilinguals introduces variability in word co-occurrence patterns.
• Lexical distribution influences how bilinguals process language online.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how the distributional properties of Spanish determiners (el, la) and the English determiner (the) affect Spanish-English bilinguals' predictive processing.
• To examine the role of determiner-noun distributional information in facilitating noun prediction and integration.
• To compare bilinguals' online processing with established corpus data.

Main Methods:

• Utilizing a visual world paradigm to track participants' eye movements.
• Analyzing the predictive and integrative abilities of Spanish-English bilinguals based on determiner exposure.
• Employing cluster permutation tests to assess statistical significance.

Main Results:

• Replication of a previously observed asymmetry in Spanish-English bilinguals regarding masculine 'el' and feminine 'la' determiners.
• Significant differences found in noun prediction and integration based on whether 'el', 'la', or 'the' preceded the noun.
• Bilinguals demonstrate distinct processing patterns influenced by the specific determiner context.

Conclusions:

• Bilinguals' online language processing is modulated by the distributional norms encountered in both single-language and code-switched environments.
• The relative frequency and co-occurrence of determiners across languages shape predictive processing.
• Findings suggest bilinguals leverage cross-linguistic distributional information to enhance real-time language comprehension.