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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 7, 2026

Examining Bilingual Language Control Using the Stroop Task

Examining Bilingual Language Control Using the Stroop Task

Published on: February 26, 2020

Bilinguals process incoming words using distributions across both languages.

Sarah Frances Phillips^1,2, Ailís Cournane²

¹Department of Neurology, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA.

Bilingualism (Cambridge, England)

|January 1, 2026

Summary

Bilinguals

Keywords:

code-switching grammatical gender language comprehension parsing visual world paradigm

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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.