Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 2009, Vol. 35, No.

4, 1029 1040

2009 American Psychological Association 0278-7393/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0015901

Lexical Competition During Second-Language Listening: Sentence Context, But Not Proficiency, Constrains Interference From the Native Lexicon
Craig G. Chambers and Hilary Cooke
University of Toronto
A spoken language eye-tracking methodology was used to evaluate the effects of sentence context and proficiency on parallel language activation during spoken language comprehension. Nonnative speakers with varying proficiency levels viewed visual displays while listening to French sentences (e.g., Marie va de crire la poule [Marie will describe the chicken]). Displays depicted several objects including the final noun target (chicken) and an interlingual near-homophone (e.g., pool) whose name in English is phonologically similar to the French target ( poule). Listeners eye movements reflected temporary consideration of the interlingual competitor when hearing the target noun, demonstrating cross-language lexical competition. However, competitor fixations were dramatically reduced when prior sentence information was incompatible with the competitor (e.g., Marie va nourrir . . . [Marie will feed . . .]). In contrast, interlingual competition from English did not vary according to participants rated proficiency in French, even though proficiency reliably predicted other aspects of processing behavior, suggesting higher proficiency in the active language does not provide a significant independent source of control over interlingual competition. The results provide new insights into the nature of parallel language activation in naturalistic sentential contexts. Keywords: bilingualism, spoken word recognition, sentence context, proficiency

Research on the comprehension and use of language by bilinguals has often demonstrated the simultaneous involvement of both languages known to a bilingual in core linguistic processes, even when only one of the languages is being used in the immediate communicative situation. In studies of online comprehension, this intrusion from the inactive language is most often investigated at the word level and rests on evidence that lexical representations in the irrelevant language sharing features with spoken or written words encountered in the currently used language are activated at an unconscious level (for reviews, see Desmet & Duyck, 2007; Dijkstra, 2005; Kroll & Dussias, 2004). This effect (known variably as bilingual parallel activation, cross-language lexical competition, language nonselective lexical access, etc.) has been investigated with a variety of experimental methodologies including lexical decision and naming tasks, the measurement of eye movements during reading, the recording of event-related potentials, and brain imaging techniques (see, e.g., Altarriba, Kroll, Sholl, &

Craig G. Chambers and Hilary Cooke, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga. This study formed part of a BSc honors thesis completed by Hilary Cooke and was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada) to Craig G. Chambers. We thank James Magnuson for helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Craig G. Chambers, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road North, Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, L5L 1C6. E-mail: craig.chambers@utoronto.ca 1029

Rayner, 1996; Jared & Kroll, 2001; van Heuven, Dijkstra, & Grainger, 1998; van Heuven, Schriefers, Dijkstra, & Hagoort, 2008). In addition, beginning with a study by Spivey and Marian (1999), lexical competition across languages has been studied by measuring listeners eye movements during the presentation of uninterrupted spoken sentences. In this adaptation of the visual world paradigm (e.g., Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard, & Sedivy, 1995), listeners are presented with sentences containing nouns that denote real or depicted objects in a visual display. Cross-language competition is typically reflected in transitory saccades to an interlingual competitora scene object whose corresponding noun in the inactive language shares phonological properties with the object being named in the active language, yet whose meaning is fully distinct (e.g., Ju & Luce, 2004; Marian & Spivey, 2003; Marian, Spivey, & Hirsh, 2003; Spivey & Marian, 1999; Weber & Cutler, 2004). In the current study, we adopted a variant of the visual world technique to refine current perspectives on the automaticity underlying the intrusion of the irrelevant lexicon. Our specific focus concerns how interlingual competition effects are attenuated by two potential sources of top-down constraint: sentence context and speaker proficiency in the active language. Although these factors play an important role in many theories of word recognition and are of increasing interest in studies of bilinguals (see, e.g., Schwartz & Kroll, 2006), their effects have not been directly tested in studies of cross-language competition using fluent spoken sentences as stimuli. The following sections provide an overview of previous work relevant to the influence of sentence context and proficiency on parallel language activation. We then turn to a description of the main experiment.

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Sentence Context and Interlingual Competition

Words are not normally heard in isolation but as part of multiword utterances. Work in unilingual language comprehension has shown that syntactic and semantic information contained in an unfolding sentence provides constraints that dampen competition during word recognition. Of greatest relevance here are studies investigating the processing of ambiguous words (e.g., homonyms such as bat), which correspond to two or more distinct meanings. Although there is debate surrounding issues such as (a) the strength of the sentence context needed to exert any effect, (b) differences associated with dominant versus subordinate meanings, and (c) the sensitivity of various methodologies for detecting effects of context at the outset, there is fairly broad consensus that context can in some way attenuate the activation of inappropriate meanings as ambiguous words are encountered (see, e.g., Gorfein, 2001; Simpson, 1994). Apart from its relevance for understanding information coordination during real-time processing, this issue is important because the context for words in the wild is rarely neutral in the sense of being free of cues that would bias a particular meaning. As argued by Duyck, Van Assche, Drieghe, and Hartsuiker (2007), investigations of bilingual parallel activation in typical sentential contexts are therefore critical to establish both the ecological validity and generalizability of the effects found in studies using isolated words. Despite the importance of this issue for models of bilingual language comprehension, there have been surprisingly few direct tests of how linguistic context influences cross-language lexical processing (see Altarriba et al., 1996; Duyck et al., 2007; ElstonGu ttler, Gunter, & Kotz, 2005; Schwartz & Kroll, 2006; van Hell & de Groot, 2008). Further, as far as we know, no study to date has focused on the comprehension of fluent spoken sentences. The general scarcity of research on this topic is likely due in part to methodological challenges associated with measuring crosslanguage competition during the comprehension of multiword utterances. For example, techniques that incorporate naming or lexical decision tasks often require the presentation of stimuli using serial visual presentation and involve periodic interruptions for participants to respond to test words. Even approaches that seem better suited for studying effects of sentence context, such as monitoring eye movements during reading, are limited by the need to use comparatively indirect measures to infer cross-language competition (i.e., differences in fixation time). Beyond the methodological challenges inherent to this issue, most studies of contextual influences on bilingual language processing have not directly addressed the specific theoretical question raised here, namely whether the semantics of sentences might constrain parallel lexical activation for the words they contain. For example, the goal of Duyck et al. (2007) was to test for processing differences when cognate words (i.e., words that share both form and meaning across languages) were presented in semantically neutral sentences versus in isolation, and not to vary sentential constraints per se. Similarly, studies by Elston-Gu ttler and colleagues (e.g., Elston-Gu ttler et al., 2005; Paulmann, ElstonGu ttler, Gunter, & Kotz, 2006) tested the more global effects of the language used in the communicative environment, varying whether the main experimental task was preceded by a film viewed in participants first or second language and examining if perfor-

mance changed over the course of the experiment as participants settled into the language of presentation. For the small set of studies that more directly address the effects of sentence-based constraints on bilingual parallel activation, the results are mixed. For example, although the English sentences used in all conditions of the Elston-Gu ttler et al. (2005) study were semantically biased to disfavor the German meaning of an interlingual homograph (i.e., a word with the same spelling but distinct meanings across languages), priming for the German meaning was nonetheless found. This effect suggests that varying sentential constraints within an experiment is unlikely to influence the extent of cross-language parallel activation. In contrast, Schwartz and Kroll (2006) found that high-constraint sentences reduced naming time differences between control words and printed cognates compared with when low-constraint sentences were used (see also van Hell & de Groot, 2008). However, when target words were interlingual homographs rather than cognates, the data did not reflect statistically significant activation of the irrelevant language in either constraining or nonconstraining sentences. Finally, Altarriba et al. (1996) found consistent fixation time differences on highfrequency target words as a function of sentential constraint. However, that study used a type of code-switching methodology in which Spanish target words were presented within English sentences. These results therefore do not directly speak to the question considered here, namely whether the semantic constraints of typical sentences heard during nonnative listening can limit consideration of the inactive lexicon.

Proficiency
Another important variable for exploring automaticity in crosslanguage lexical competition is the proficiency level of the language user. Studies using a range of methodologies have shown that when the more proficient language is currently inactive (i.e., when the less proficient language is being used), comprehenders are likely to encounter stronger cross-language competition compared with the reverse scenario where the lower proficiency language is inactive (e.g., Jared & Kroll, 2001; Marian & Spivey, 2003; van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002; Weber & Cutler, 2004). This is consistent with the assumption that associations between phonological or orthographic forms and lexical concepts will be stronger in the more proficient language and should show correspondingly more bottom-up activation. In the current study, however, we focused on the possibility that proficiency in the active language may modulate the extent of competition from the inactive language. This focus is motivated by various perspectives, including work with monolinguals suggesting that increased reading skill corresponds to more effective suppression of the irrelevant meanings of lexically ambiguous words (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1993, 1997) and related findings in the bilingual processing literature such as those showing that native and nonnative readers differ in the activation and suppression of homonyms in the active language (e.g., Elston-Gu ttler & Friederici, 2005; Frenck-Mestre & Prince, 1997; Love, Maas, & Swinney, 2003). Our specific question in the current study is whether strong interlingual competition will be observed primarily in individuals with lower proficiency in the active language. An interaction involving proficiency and sentence context is also possible, such that higher proficiency listeners

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are better able to apply the semantic constraints provided by sentences to moderate competition from the inactive language. Our approach to implementing measures of proficiency contrasts somewhat with many previous studies. For example, one common approach is to switch the testing language across conditions to achieve a proficiency contrast within the same sample of participants (i.e., testing the same individuals in their native and nonnative language). Although results from studies adopting this approach are informative, the manipulation risks obscuring actual effects of proficiency with language-specific differences arising from the translation of materials, and also conflates potential quantitative differences in proficiency with qualitative differences associated with first versus second language status. In the current study, we aimed to isolate effects of proficiency more directly by examining differences within a participant sample consisting entirely of nonnative speakers of French who were native speakers of English. We also used a continuous measure of proficiency in the analyses to maximize the detection of effects related to this variable, instead of using discrete categories (e.g., high vs. low proficiency). Because proficiency is clearly a nondiscrete phenomenon in the real world, its treatment as a categorical variable is likely to entail a loss of power in statistical inference (e.g., the effect of dichotomizing continuous measures can be equivalent to eliminating one third of the original data; see Cohen, 1983).

Figure 1. Black and white example of visual display on critical trial.

the nonrestrictive version, the predicate is compatible with both the target and the competitor object. Restrictive: Marie va nourrir la poule [Marie will feed the chicken] Nonrestrictive: Marie va de crire la poule [Marie will describe the chicken] Further, to ensure that any effects of sentence context or proficiency were likely to generalize across different situations, two features of the experiment ensured consistent bottom-up competition from the inactive language. First, we selected targetcompetitor pairs consisting of interlingual near-homophones that have fully distinct meanings across languages yet share many phonological characteristics, such as English pool and French poule. Although these pairs exhibit some differences including those arising from language-specific phonemic inventories and details of phonetic implementation (e.g., voice onset time, vowel diphthongization), the overall similarity is very strong and is clearly greater than for word pairs that share only initial sounds, which have been the focus of previous studies using the visual world technique. Second, we used listeners nonnative language as the active language in the experiment (meaning that the dominant language is the inactive language). Past studies have shown that this experimental scenario reliably creates effects of interlingual competition (e.g., Jared & Kroll, 2001; Marian & Spivey, 2003; van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002). The measures of interest involve participants eye movement behavior at two separate points in the speech stream. First, by examining eye movements before the noun is heard, we can conduct a manipulation check to confirm the intended effect of sentential constraint and establish whether the nonnative participants are interpreting the French materials in a sufficiently online manner. Previous research has shown that semantically or pragmatically constraining predicate terms trigger anticipatory saccades to compatible referents in the visual display (e.g., Altmann & Kamide, 1999; Chambers & San Juan, 2008; Kako & Trueswell, 2000). A greater extent of anticipatory saccades to the target object

Overview of the Experiment

In the current study, we adopted a visual-word eye-tracking technique to measure interlingual competition during the comprehension of uninterrupted utterances. The use of spoken language materials allowed us to bypass effects that may be specific to reading processes or reader skill, both of which can be partially dissociated from more general language comprehension mechanisms (Seidenberg, 1995). Further, previous studies using the visual world technique have been effective at detecting effects of sentence context on lexical competition in unilingual contexts. In a study of spoken Dutch, Dahan and Tanenhaus (2004) measured listeners visual consideration of a scene object depicting a phonological competitor such as boot [boat] upon hearing a target noun sharing onset sounds such as boom [tree], which was also depicted in the display. They found the likelihood of temporarily fixating the competitor before settling on the target object was eliminated when preceding information was semantically incompatible with the competitor (e.g., Sinds wanneer groeit een boom zo snel? [Since when grows a tree so fast?]). In contrast, temporary consideration of the competitor was evident when preceding information was compatible with both the target and competitor (e.g., Sinds wanneer kan een boom zo snel groeien? [Since when can a tree grow so fast?]). The effects of other sentence-level constraints on lexical competition, such as prosody and form class, have also been successfully investigated using the visual world technique (e.g., Dahan, Tanenhaus, & Chambers, 2002; Magnuson, Tanenhaus, & Aslin, 2008). In the current study, we adopted a sentence context manipulation similar to the one used by Dahan and Tanenhaus (2004) except that different predicate terms were used to create semantically restrictive and nonrestrictive sentences. In the restrictive version (see example below), the predicate is compatible with the target noun (e.g., poule [chicken]) but not with an English phonological competitor noun ( pool), which is also depicted in the visual display (see Figure 1). In

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upon hearing the more restrictive predicate would therefore demonstrate the effectiveness of the contextual manipulation on the same testing occasion where effects of interlingual competition will be evaluated, and using the same sample of participants. Second, eye movement behavior at the final noun will be used to test for competition from the inactive language, and whether the extent of competition varies according to sentence context and proficiency. At this point, saccades to the competitor object, rather than to the target, will provide the relevant measure.

Stimuli
Critical trials. Twelve word pairs were selected, consisting of a French target word (e.g., poule) and an English interlingual competitor word that shared global sound-level characteristics with the target (e.g., pool) but that clearly differed from the French word at the level of meaning (the full set of target-competitor pairs is provided in the Appendix). The average extent of phonemic overlap in French targets and English competitors was 85% (Canadian French, 84% for European French), with the majority of non-overlapping phonemes constituting a close approximation (e.g., French r vs. English r; the vowel in French lune vs. that in English loon, etc.). Although some pairs could arguably be described as false cognates or false friends/faux amis, others would not be obvious members of this category due to orthographic differences. An effort was made to ensure that substantial phonological overlap was present only for French words denoting targets and the English words denoting competitor objects, and not the converse. In other words, the English translation of target words and the French translations of competitor words were not phonologically similar (e.g., English chicken/French piscine [pool]). Sense-specific word frequency estimates were obtained from the online version of WordNet (Princeton University, 2006), using the English competitor name and the translation of the French target name. This approach allowed us to select frequency values corresponding to the precise sense of the word depicted in the clip-art image. Target and competitor words were matched as closely as possible on the basis of these frequency estimates, t(11) 1.05, p .30, and the number of word pairs containing targets of relatively higher frequency was equated with the number of pairs containing competitors of higher frequency. The set of French target words was evaluated prior to inclusion in the experiment by four nonnative learners of French to ensure their familiarity for our eventual participants. For each critical trial, we also selected a competitor primean object semantically associated with the interlingual competitor object (e.g., a towel, given the competitor pool) but that did not share the sound pattern of the target word in English or French. The presence or absence of this item on critical trials was varied across conditions, and a semantically and phonologically unrelated item was substituted when the prime image was absent. The primes were selected on the basis of intuition and were verified using the term-to-term pairwise comparison tool on the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) website (University of Colorado at Boulder, 2003). The average cosine between interlingual competitors and the competitor primes was .17 (SD .07), ranging from .08 (fabricneedle) to .30 (fishworm). In contrast, the average cosine between interlingual competitors and the unrelated objects used when primes were absent was .06 (SD .07), a difference that was highly significant, t(11) 5.07, p .001. The fourth item in the array was always an unrelated item that bore no phonological or semantic relationship to the target word. As a precaution, grammatical gender was counterbalanced for
1 In fact, there was a somewhat sizeable gap in accuracy scores between the participants who met the inclusion threshold and those who did not. The highest target identification score within the set of excluded participants was only 58% correct, providing an additional rationale for enforcing our selection criterion.

Methodological Control Manipulation

We also included a methodological control that has not been applied in previous research using the visual world paradigm. This was done to address a potential concern associated with including the interlingual competitor in the visual display on critical trials. The reason for including this image clearly stems from its diagnostic valuefixations to this object provide the primary measure of cross-language lexical competition. However, the presence of the competitor item in the display might inadvertently bias listeners toward considering this item when the critical speech is encountered. For example, if we assume an interconnected mental architecture for linguistic representations and semantic memory, visual inspection of the competitor object might evoke its associated semantic concept and consequently activate corresponding linguistic representations in both the relevant and the irrelevant language. In other words, the presence of the competitor in the visual display may effectively prime lexical representations in the inactive language, thereby exaggerating measures of parallel language competition in the visual world paradigm. Because removing the competitor object from the display would eliminate the direct means to test for cross-language activation, we adopted the converse strategy of varying the presence of another potentially biasing object in the visual display. If the visual presence of scene objects primes lexical-conceptual representations in a way that affects eye movements when the target noun occurs, we reasoned that the inclusion of an additional object semantically related to the competitor (e.g., a towel, given pool as competitor) should further boost the activation level of the competitor object concept. However, if the presence of this competitor prime has no effect on visual consideration of the competitor compared with when the prime is absent, this should alleviate concerns that the critical competition effects are the result of visual priming.

Method Participants
The final participant sample consisted of 20 University of Toronto Mississauga undergraduate students. An additional 6 participants were excluded from the data analysis because they selected the incorrect target object on more than two critical trials and consequently were deemed to fall below our minimum proficiency criterion.1 All participants considered English their dominant language, and they reported receiving a medium to high degree of second-language instruction in French. All participants had normal or corrected vision.

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depicted objects such that, for half of the object arrays, the target (e.g., poule [feminine]) matched the French translation of the interlingual competitor in gender (e.g., pool French piscine [feminine]). For the remaining half, the gender of the target name mismatched the competitors French name. This ensured that the presence or absence of competition from the English interlingual competitor could not result in part from uncontrolled grammatical gender matches or mismatches for the French names of the target and competitor objects. Clip-art items corresponding to each word were selected primarily from the set constructed by Rossion and Pourtois (2004). The remaining images were acquired from commercial clip-art packages and were chosen to match the Rossion and Pourtois images in terms of visual style. On each trial, the depicted objects were displayed in the cardinal point positions within a 3 3 grid, with the specific position of each object (e.g., target, competitor, competitor prime, unrelated item) fully counterbalanced across trials. The square in the middle of the grid contained a question mark, where the participant dragged an object if it corresponded to the last word in the sentence. For each display, a declarative sentence was constructed in which the final word was a noun denoting the target item and in which the preceding verb occurred in the near future tense (futur proche). The subject noun phrase was always the first name of an unidentified individual who was not depicted in the visual display. Two versions of each sentence were created and were varied across experimental conditions. In the nonrestrictive condition, the sentence predicate was semantically compatible with both the target and the competitor object. In the restrictive condition, the predicate was compatible with the target but was incompatible with the competitor (descriptions of several object arrays are provided in Table 1). A second (filler) sentence followed

the critical sentence, always referring to one of the unrelated objects. The context manipulation for critical sentences (restrictivenonrestrictive) was crossed with the competitor prime manipulation (presentabsent) to create four experimental conditions. Three trials were assigned to each condition, yielding 12 critical trials in total. Four versions of the experiment were created by cycling the assignment of object arrays across the four conditions. Overall, each array occurred in all of the conditions; however, a given participant saw each array only once. Filler items. In addition to the critical trials, an additional 36 trials were included to neutralize any expectations that might develop on the basis of the critical trials. For example, the target objects referred to in the instructions were not members of an interlingual near-homophone pair. On some filler trials, display objects reflected a specific type of semantic relationship (e.g., superordinatesubordinate relationships, different-colored exemplars of the same object category) to further distract participants from the primary experimental manipulations. The presentation order for the full set of trials was pseudorandomized with the constraints that no more than 2 experimental trials could follow in direct succession and that the first experimental trial occurred as the 7th trial in the full sequence. All sentences were digitally recorded at a sampling frequency of 32,000 Hz by a female native speaker of French, and care was taken to maintain a constant intensity level and speed.

Procedure
Language background questionnaire. Each participant first completed a language background questionnaire that assessed details including time spent in French-speaking contexts; participant age and years of exposure to French; self-rated proficiency in French on 7-point scales for reading, writing, speaking, and listening; and various questions regarding academic experience with French in the range of instructional formats provided within the Canadian education system. Eye-tracking experiment. After completing the questionnaire, the participant was seated in front of a 17-inch monitor positioned on a tabletop, with high-quality speakers located on either side. The participant was told that he or she would listen to a series of sentences in French and use a computer mouse to select the image corresponding to the final word in each sentence and drag it to the question mark in the center square. The participant was then fitted with a head-mounted eye tracker (EyeLink II, SR Research, Ltd., Mississauga, Ontario, Canada), and, following calibration, the experiment began. At the start of each trial, a fixation point appeared in the center of the screen. After this point was fixated, it disappeared from view and the object array containing the clip-art images was presented on the screen. After 2,000 ms, a short bell sound was played, and the first sentence then began. After the participant selected the object corresponding to the final word, the second sentence was played, and the participant responded accordingly. The images then disappeared, after which the next trial began. On experimental trials, the critical sentence was always the first sentence presented. The entire experimental session lasted approximately 50 min.

Table 1 Additional Examples of Object Arrays Used in Experimental Displays

Object Ringa Bagb Combc Nutd Casee Sheet of papera Fishb Bowc Skirtd Worme Moona Loonb Pearc Nosed Foxe
a

Sentence Restrictive: Julie va faire briller la bague. [Julie will polish the ring.] Nonrestrictive: Julie va aimer la bague. [Julie will like the ring.] Restrictive: Marie va de chirer la fiche. [Marie will tear the sheet/form.] Nonrestrictive: Marie va chercher la fiche. [Marie will look for the sheet/form.] Restrictive: Jean va voyager a ` la lune. [John will travel to the moon.] Nonrestrictive: Jean va de crire la lune. [John will describe the moon.]

Target object. b Interlingual competitor object. c Unrelated object 1. d Unrelated object 2. e Competitor prime (replaced unrelated object 2 on 50% of trials).

1034 Results Questionnaire Data

CHAMBERS AND COOKE

Mean values and range information for the quantitative measures obtained from participants proficiency questionnaires are shown in Table 2. The questionnaire data were used to calculate a single measure of proficiency for each participant to use in subsequent analyses. The 7-point scores for reading, writing, listening, and speaking ability were used to calculate a value making up 70% of the composite score. Because of the nature of our experimental task, these scores were weighted to emphasize spoken language skills over written language skills (45% vs. 25%) and to emphasize comprehension over production (55% vs. 15%). Each participants self-ratings for listening, speaking, reading, and writing therefore contributed 35%, 10%, 20%, and 5% toward his or her composite score, respectively. Another 20% was based on a ratio reflecting the number of years spent in enriched forms of experience with French in the school years (typically, French immersion programs) divided by 12 (i.e., the number of full years of pre-university schooling). The final 10% was based on a ratio representing the percentage of time currently spent in French language activities (estimated by the participant as a percentage) divided by 50 (the maximum percentage reported on questionnaires). The range of proficiency levels of the participants, as captured by this composite measure, is shown in Figure 2. This figure illustrates that the participant sample spans a sufficient range and exhibits enough variability to allow effects of proficiency to be plausibly detected in the comprehension data.

Figure 2. Distribution of proficiency scores within participant sample, ordered from highest to lowest.

Eye Movement Data

Fourteen trials (5.8% of all data) were removed from the analysis because participants selected the incorrect object. As noted earlier, participants who selected the incorrect object on more than two critical trials were removed from the final sample. Pre-noun region. We first consider eye movements in the interval before the final noun was heard. As mentioned earlier, saccades to the target object ought to occur more often in this region with restrictive sentences than with nonrestrictive senTable 2 Quantitative Measures of Participants Proficiency in French
Measure Self-rated French proficiency (on 7-point scale) Readinga Writinga Speakinga Listeninga Current time spent in French-language situationsa Years of nonstandard experience in Frencha,b Mean age Years of exposure to French (in any degree)
a b

Range

5.3 4.75 4.25 4.85 14% 4 19.45 11.85

37 27 16 27 0%50% 012 1823 819

tences. This is because the predicate in the restrictive condition provides information that would in principle allow listeners to anticipate the upcoming target. However, this would occur only if the second-language listeners interpret the sentences in a sufficiently online manner. The pre-noun region was operationalized as an interval starting at 200 ms after verb onset (in view of the saccadic lag normally observed with word recognition studies using this paradigm; see Allopenna, Magnuson, & Tanenhaus, 1998) and ending 1,000 ms later. Because the average duration of the period between verb onset and noun onset was in fact 1,220 ms, the 1,000-ms interval we used will often capture eye movement behavior driven by the sounds in the first two thirds of the unfolding predicate.2 Figure 3 shows the mean number of saccades to the target object in the pre-noun region (normally less than 1.0 in view of the fact that these saccades are produced in anticipation of the target name), averaged across trials and participants. For coding purposes, the timing of a saccade to a display object was calculated as the moment at which the point-of-gaze entered the grid square containing the object. Saccades, rather than fixation probabilities, were used as the dependent measure in this study to enable us to more clearly distinguish effects arising from the processing of the final noun from those related to the preceding predicate. (Saccades provide a more objective measure in this situation because they reflect only new eye movements to scene objects and are less affected by whether the eye has already fixated a particular object on the basis of earlier information). To provide an index of baseline rates in saccadic behavior, we also show the average number of saccades to an unrelated display object in Figure 3. For the target object, the results show a marked increase in saccades in the restrictive condition. This data pattern was evaluated using a 2 2 analysis of variance with sentence context (restrictivenonrestrictive) and competitor prime (present absent) as within-participants factors. A significant main effect of
2 A change to the materials made just before testing began resulted in an unusually long predicate region for one test sentence: utiliser un marteau pour frapper, literally to use a hammer to hit (English to hammer). This was truncated at marteau when we calculated average region length because the semantic match with the target was clear by this point.

Used to calculate composite score. Experiences and/or formal instruction in French in situations other than traditional-format French classes (referred to as Core French in Canada), such as French immersion schooling or attending a francophone school.

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Figure 3. Mean number of saccades to the target object in the pre-noun region. Saccades to an unrelated object are shown for purposes of comparison. Error bars indicate standard error.

sentence context was found in the analysis by participants, F1(1, 2 19) 12.51, p .01, P .40, and by items, F2(1, 11) 13.57, 2 p .01, P .55. In contrast, neither the effect of competitor prime ( ps .27) nor the interaction with sentence context ( ps .71) was significant. (Although the prime manipulation was included to address effects observed in the noun region, the effects are reported here because of the factorial nature of the experimental design). To evaluate whether the likelihood of generating anticipatory saccades to the target object varied according to proficiency, we first calculated a difference score for each participant by subtracting the number of target saccades in the restrictive condition from those in the nonrestrictive condition. This provides a participantspecific measure of constraint use, namely the ability to apply the stronger semantic constraints provided by restrictive sentences compared with nonrestrictive sentences. We then used linear regression to test whether participants composite proficiency scores predicted the extent of constraint use. The results, depicted in the top panel of Figure 4, indicated that proficiency captured 38% of the variance in listeners use of predicate information to anticipate target referents, r2 .36, F(1, 19) 10.14, p .01. Listeners with greater proficiency in French were more likely to use predicate information to generate anticipatory saccades to the target object. As an additional test of the validity of the proficiency scores, we conducted a second analysis in which the dependent measure was the number of critical trials on which participants selected the incorrect target. As noted earlier, participants could not remain in the final sample if they selected the incorrect target on more than two critical trials. However, by this criterion, data from participants who made zero, one, or two target errors were included in the final sample. Despite the limited range in the dependent variable (i.e., 0, 1, or 2), proficiency scores predicted (coincidentally) the same amount of variance in error rates, r2 .36, F(1, 19) 10.27, p .005 (see Figure 4, bottom panel), with participants with lower proficiency making more errors. The results from the pre-noun region allow us to make two important points. First, the increase in anticipatory saccades observed with restrictive predicates indicates that listeners were successfully computing the semantics of individual lexical items as sentences unfolded in real time, despite the fact that the sentences

occurred in the listeners nonnative language. This indicates that semantic constraints provided by the predicate will clearly be available to comprehension mechanisms when the sentence final noun is subsequently heard. Consequently, any failure to use sentential constraints to modulate interlingual competition upon hearing the noun would provide strong evidence for models assuming fully nonselective lexical access across the language boundary. Second, the finding that the degree of anticipatory interpretation varied according to listeners rated proficiency clearly validates the proficiency ratings in terms of their relevance to aspects of real-time spoken language processinga point also reflected in the observed relationship between proficiency scores and target selection errors. The presence of these proficiency effects might suggest that listeners with higher proficiency in French will be more effective at using sentential constraints to suppress crosslanguage competition upon encountering the subsequent noun. However, it is also possible that individuals with lower proficiency will have caught up in their computation of predicate semantics by the time the noun is heard, thereby eliminating proficiency-related differences in the use of sentence context to suppress competition. Proficiency could also have a largely independent effect from sentence context in providing control over intrusion from the inactive language, or it may be that proficiency and context have little or no effect on interlingual competition, as predicted by models assuming fully nonselective lexical access.

Figure 4. Relationship between proficiency scores and comprehension measures. Panel A: use of predicate constraints to anticipate target object. Panel B: target selection errors.

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Noun region. In this region, we examine listeners likelihood of making a saccade to the object depicting the English interlingual competitor. This was calculated within an interval beginning 200 ms after noun onset and ending at 800 ms (approximately 200 ms after the average noun offset at 633 ms). In view of the approximately 200-ms saccadic time lag observed in this paradigm, this window will capture eye movement behavior driven by processes occurring as the noun is actually heard. Figure 5 shows the average number of competitor saccades within the noun region across conditions, along with saccades to an unrelated display object to provide a visual baseline. Note that the mean values are less than 1 because the competitor item is by definition not the object that the French noun actually denotes. The data clearly show that consideration of the competitor object was reduced when the semantics of the context sentence were more restrictivea differ2 ence that is statistically reliable, F1(1, 19) 7.66, p .05, P 2 .29; F2(1, 11) 6.81, p .05, P .38. There was no main effect associated with the absence or presence of the competitor prime, and no Prime Sentence Context interaction (all Fs 1). Recall that the competitor prime manipulation was included to test whether eye movements to the interlingual competitor are caused by a form of semantically mediated priming triggered by the inclusion of the competitor object in the display. If the mere presence of display objects could create priming effects in this way (i.e., such that their influence would be detected as the noun was heard), the inclusion of the prime image in the display should have provided an additional source of activation for the competitor concept, thereby increasing competitor fixations even further. The lack of a prime effect therefore suggests that visual consideration of the interlingual competitor is most likely due to genuine linguistically driven cross-language lexical competition, as originally demonstrated in studies of visual word recognition using more indirect measures. One concern associated with the saccade measure used to this point is that saccades to the competitor object might be dampened in the restrictive condition only because listeners had a higher likelihood of fixating the target object at that point (as a result of the previously encountered predicate information). As a result, the eye might be less available for subsequent saccades, perhaps because language processing mechanisms are already definitive in their selection of the target or because of the necessary time

Figure 5. Mean number of saccades to the interlingual competitor in the noun region. Saccades to an unrelated object are shown for comparison.

interval before another saccade can be programmed and executed. This explanation can be directly evaluated by breaking down the results according to whether listeners are or are not fixating the target at the beginning of the time window for the noun region. Panel A of Figure 6 shows the probability of fixating the competitor object on only those trials where the eye was not already anticipating the target object. (Fixation probabilities are shown here to illustrate processing dynamics as the target word is heard in real time.) At the start of the noun region, listeners are fixating the competitor approximately 25% of the time, reflecting the base probability with which gaze is likely directed to any of the four remaining nonblank display areas (i.e., the three clickable objects other than the target and the central box containing the question mark). At approximately 500 ms after noun onset, gazes to the competitor object increase, but only in the condition with nonrestrictive sentences. Recall that, given the relatively consistent eye movement programming lag observed in this paradigm, fixations at the 500-ms mark reflect responses to speech information approximately 300 ms after noun onset. The increase in fixations in the nonrestrictive condition is therefore driven by interpretive processes as the initial sounds of the word are heard (average word duration 633 ms). As the word continues to unfold, competitor fixations in the condition with nonrestrictive sentences eventually climb to slightly more than two times what is observed with restrictive sentences. Panel B in Figure 6 shows the influence of sentence context in trials in which gaze was fixated on the intended target as the noun began. The probability of fixating the interlingual competitor begins at zero (because the trials shown here are defined by the fact that the target is the object being fixated at noun onset), and by 450 ms after noun onset reflects much stronger consideration of the competitor when sentence context is nonrestrictive compared with restrictive. As more speech sounds are heard, the number of competitor fixations in the nonrestrictive condition rises to at least twice what is observed in the restrictive condition. This result shows that, even when listeners had anticipated the target object beforehand, fixation patterns upon hearing the noun reflect some consideration of the interlingual competitor, but only with nonrestrictive sentences. These patterns unambiguously demonstrate that the reduction in competitor saccades with semantically restrictive contexts (as shown in Figure 5) is not an artifact caused by the higher likelihood of the anticipatory target fixations that are also observed in this experimental condition. One additional question concerns precisely to what extent interlingual competition was suppressed when restrictive sentences were used. A partial answer to this question is provided by comparing average saccades to the competitor with saccades to the phonologically (and semantically) unrelated display object, as shown in Figure 5. As the figure shows, the unrelated object also attracts a small degree of visual consideration, although it seems less in the restrictive condition compared with the competitor object. A standard statistical test of this difference cannot be performed due to the fact that saccades to the competitor and those to unrelated objects are not independent (i.e., both objects cannot be fixated simultaneously). However, it is possible to calculate a relatively accurate measure of the baseline-level number of saccades to nontarget objects (excluding interlingual competitors) using an aggregate measure of nontarget saccades across all trials. Using the same analysis window described previously, we ob-

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Figure 6. Contingent probability of fixating the interlingual competitor object over time, starting from noun onset. Panel A: competitor fixations when target object was not being fixated at noun onset. Panel B: competitor fixations when target object was being fixated at noun onset.

tained a value of .17 for this measure. We then evaluated the incidence of competitor saccades in the restrictive condition (.27) using a standard t test against chance, where chance .17. The results revealed a marginal difference, t(19) 2.08, p .051, possibly indicating that competition was not entirely eliminated. It is important to point out that some added consideration of the competitor is expected (assuming an interactive architecture for spoken word recognition) in view of the fact that names of the unrelated objects, unlike the competitor, bore absolutely no phonological similarity to the target name. It is also unclear if absolute suppression would be fully adaptive for bilingual listeners. Not only do individual utterances often involve some degree of lexical code switching, but the active and inactive language can also sometimes be exchanged over the course of conversation. Some low-level consideration of the inactive lexicon is therefore likely to have functional value. Proficiency and interlingual competition. To evaluate the relationship between cross-language competition (i.e., from English) and proficiency in the active language (French), we used linear regression to evaluate whether proficiency scores could reliably predict the extent to which the interlingual competitor is considered as the target noun is heard. To our surprise, the analyses

revealed no significant effect of proficiency on interlingual competition. This was the case regardless of whether the dependent variable used in the analysis was participants average likelihood of considering the competitor (i.e., collapsed across sentence context conditions, p .10) or whether the regression was conducted separately for restrictive ( p .10) and nonrestrictive ( p .5) sentence contexts. The lack of a proficiency effect in this regard is unlikely to result from the particular way in which the composite proficiency score was calculated. In fact, if we had instead chosen any one of the original individual proficiency measures to use as the predictor variable, the same insignificant result would have been obtained (all ps .25). Even measures that were not used to calculate the composite score (age, number of years of exposure to French) are similarly nonpredictive (Fs .4). Although a sample of 20 participants might be argued to be somewhat limited for testing this relationship, it is important to point out that the composite proficiency scores reliably predicted participants performance in the active language (specifically, their target error rates and anticipatory interpretation in the pre-noun region). It is also relevant to note that, though nonsignificant, the amount of variance predicted by proficiency in the restrictive condition (r2 .14) was greater than in the nonrestrictive condition (r2 .02). If increased proficiency in French had an independent inhibitory effect on competition, this pattern would be unexpected. This is because competitor fixations in the nonrestrictive condition would provide a comparatively clean test of proficiency effects, without the potentially obfuscating influence of sentential constraints. Further, analyses of the data in the nonrestrictive condition should, a priori, have a greater mathematical likelihood of detecting a significant predictive relationship because of the overall greater number of competitor saccades that occur in this condition. We therefore interpret the data pattern as evidence that proficiency does not provide a separate source of control over parallel language activation. The nonsignificant but numerically larger effect of proficiency in the restrictive condition is likely the lingering influence of variations in participants ability to rapidly compute the previously encountered predicate, rather than any separate inhibitory effect related to increased proficiency in the active language.

Discussion
The goal of this study was to evaluate how cross-language competition in spoken utterances is moderated by two potential sources of top-down constraint, namely the semantic content of the sentence and nonnative listeners proficiency in the active language (French). The findings indicate that sentence context had an unmistakable influence on the extent of cross-language competition from the inactive language (English). The semantic constraints provided by the sentence predicate strongly dampened the extent to which listeners unconsciously considered the English lexicon when interpreting French sentencesa result that is inconsistent with models assuming fully context-independent effects of crosslanguage competition, or only late-acting effects of contextual constraint. In contrast, however, listeners proficiency in French had no apparent effect on the extent of interlingual competition from English, even though proficiency reliably predicted processing effects in the active language. This outcome suggests that increased proficiency in the active language does not provide a

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significant independent source of control over intrusion from the inactive language for nonnative listeners. We discuss the implications of the findings in the following sections.

Suppression of Interlingual Competition by Linguistic Context

Understanding the extent of cross-language lexical competition that occurs in natural contexts is often highlighted as a vital issue in research on the interpretation and use of language by bilinguals (e.g., Desmet & Duyck, 2007; Dijkstra, 2005; Kroll & Dussias, 2004). To date, however, the majority of studies have focused on the recognition or production of isolated words, and none to our knowledge have addressed the effects of linguistic context during the comprehension of fluent spoken language. Further, it is sometimes suggested that context has a negligible effect on interlingual competition (see, e.g., Desmet & Duyck, 2007; Paulmann et al., 2006). Our findings are incompatible with these claims to the extent that certain contextual constraints seem to strongly reduce competition from the irrelevant lexicon. In particular, we found that the semantic constraints provided by predicate terms virtually eliminated listeners likelihood of considering a visual referent corresponding to an interlingual competitor word. Because the predicate terms in question immediately preceded the target noun phrase, the effects also highlight the speed with which these computations occur, as well as their influence on lexical processing in the earliest moments of interpreting the critical word. It is also relevant to note that the current experiment was conducted in the participants nonnative language (French) and used sentences containing nearhomophones in which the target word in the active language strongly resembled a word in the inactive language. This scenario ensured strong bottom-up effects, which in turn suggests that our findings should fully generalize to situations involving weaker competition from the auditory input, such as when the nonnative language is inactive, or when words exhibit a smaller degree of phonological overlap. Methodological issues may be one important consideration for evaluating differences with earlier studies. One specific issue in this regard concerns the temporal sensitivity of the dependent measures. Eye movement measures in the visual world paradigm allow for the investigation of contextual effects as a target word is encountered. In contrast, certain reading-based methodologies such as those using probe words (e.g., in lexical decision tasks) require the critical measurements to take place after the word of interest. Further, by using images that depict a specific word meaning in the visual display, the visual world technique allows us to clearly isolate the effect to different meanings for a given sound pattern across the language boundary. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that many previous studies supporting the notion of nonselective interlingual competition in context did not actually compare different levels of linguistic constraint, but rather manipulated the mode-setting effect of the language used in the broader situational context, or simply whether words were presented in isolation versus in sentence frames. If we narrow our scope to the only studies we are aware of that directly contrasted the effects of stronger and weaker sentential constraints (Schwartz & Kroll, 2006; van Hell & de Groot, 2008), the results are quite congruent. For example, Schwartz and Kroll

used the serial presentation of sentence words to study the influence of high- and low-constraint sentences on naming times and naming errors for cognates and interlingual homographs. The facilitation typically observed with cognates was eliminated when high-constraint sentences were used. However, interlingual homographs failed to show any effect of interlingual competition in either high- or low-constraint sentences. The authors suggested that the latter result might reflect limitations in the measures provided by naming techniques and that more definitive findings might be obtained using more sensitive measuresa result that is apparently confirmed in the present study. The finding that sentence context exerts clear and immediate effects on bilinguals lexical processing brings research on bilingual populations in line with recent studies of monolinguals (e.g., Dahan & Tanenhaus, 2004; Magnuson et al., 2008; Pirog Revill, Tanenhaus, & Aslin, 2008). These studies have shown that sentential semantics and form-class information can constrain lexical competition from the earliest moments of spoken word recognition. It is nonetheless possible that other kinds of context might not be as effective at suppressing effects of cross-language competition. Although pragmatic constraints stemming from the broader behavioral context as well as listeners goals and expectations have been observed to immediately constrain the interpretation of speech input in unilingual settings (e.g., Brown-Schmidt & Tanenhaus, 2008; Chambers & San Juan, 2008; Chambers, Tanenhaus, & Magnuson, 2004; Sedivy, 2003), the same sorts of experiments have not been carried out with bilingual listeners using measures that reflect cross-language competition. The most comparable studies in this regard (e.g., those in which a particular language is used in the pre-experimental session to encourage comprehenders to adopt a language-specific processing mode) have in fact sometimes reported little influence of context (e.g., Elston-Gu ttler et al., 2005). The idea that cross-language competition can be modulated by linguistic but not extralinguistic constraints is in fact a prediction of Dijkstra and van Heuvens (2002) BIA model of visual word recognition in bilinguals. Additional studies are clearly necessary to evaluate the similarities and differences in visual and spoken word recognition when it comes to the effect of contextual constraints on intrusion from the inactive lexicon. One final implication related to the effect of sentence context concerns the extent of lexical competition that characterizes spoken word recognition in nonnative listeners. Recent work by Weber and Cutler (2004) has highlighted the point that not only do nonnative listeners experience competition from lexical candidates in the inactive (native) language, but they also experience competition from candidates in the active language that native speakers would not experience under normal listening circumstances. For example, native Dutch speakers showed elevated consideration of a depicted panda while hearing the target noun pencil in English sentences, whereas native English speakers did not. This is due to the native Dutch speakers slightly inaccurate phonemic categories for English speech sounds (as contoured by their native categories for Dutch sounds). In the words of Weber and Cutler, the double penalty of added competition from the active and inactive language entails a gloomy view of spoken word recognition in a second language (p. 18). However, the current results suggest that the actual extent of competition may often be significantly reduced by the semantic constraints that characterize lexical processing in context. The net differences between native and nonnative lexical processing may therefore be smaller than this gloomy view would suggest.

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Proficiency in the Active Language as a Source of Top-Down Control

Lexical competitors in the inactive language rarely surface to conscious awareness, and their detection typically requires special experimental methodologies. This observation implicates the existence of control mechanisms that regulate the bottom-up mapping of sound patterns to contextually relevant word meanings on both sides of the language boundary. In this study, we evaluated whether these sources of control are related to listeners proficiency in the active language (French). Our findings indicate that the extent of intrusion from the inactive lexicon did not vary as a function of the listeners proficiency level. It is also interesting that proficiency did not interact with sentential constraints such that listeners who were faster at computing the semantics of the preceding predicate were more effective at suppressing consideration of an interlingual competitor. We suspect the lack of an interaction indicates that the lower proficiency listeners had caught up in their processing of predicate information by the time the noun was encountered. Indeed, if we consider only the least proficient half of the participant sample, 5 of 10 of these individuals obtained a constraint use value that was greater than zero in the pre-noun region (see top panel of Figure 4), suggesting that they were already beginning to use predicate information in the restrictive sentences (compared to unrestrictive sentences) to anticipate the upcoming referent. Given that our measurement interval was biased toward capturing only the first two thirds of the sounds in the predicate region, it is perhaps not surprising than proficiency-related differences in interpreting predicate semantics were smoothed out by the time the noun occurred. The pattern of results therefore leads us to conclude that top-down control mechanisms governing cross-language lexical competition may often be relatively uniform across individuals of varying proficiency levels. This conclusion is generally compatible with the results of Schwartz and Kroll (2006), who found that native Spanish readers showed consistent parallel activation of Spanish during the reading of English sentences with EnglishSpanish cognates, regardless of whether readers were classified as having high or low proficiency in English. Beyond showing a parallel effect in spoken word recognition, the current results help to clarify the interpretation of Schwartz and Krolls findings. Specifically, Schwartz and Krolls high- and low-proficiency groups consisted of speakers of different dialects of Spanish (United States vs. Spain)a fact that entailed certain changes to some of the experimental materials. The current study demonstrates that the non-effect of proficiency still holds when applying continuous measures of proficiency within the same language community and when the experimental materials are held constant. It is possible, however, that proficiency-driven control over crosslanguage competition might become apparent in a sample of speakers more toward the extreme end of the fluency continuum (such as fully balanced bilinguals)a question we must leave to future research. But as noted earlier, incomplete suppression of the inactive language can be understood as an advantage when considering the processing requirements for listening to utterances with code-switched words, which is a relatively common phenomenon in conversations among bilinguals. Indeed, previous work has suggested that code switching incurs a comparatively low cognitive penalty during active comprehension (Moreno, Federmeier, & Kutas, 2002). Our data suggest that any benefits stemming from activation of the native language in this

regard may be conferred equally on nonnative speakers within a wide range of proficiency levels. The findings also highlight one factor that may account for how listeners manage the demands of code switching efficiently, namely that sentential constraints rapidly limit consideration to only contextually appropriate lexical candidates in both the active and inactive language.

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Appendix Target-Competitor Pairs and Accompanying Predicate Terms Used on Critical Trials
Restrictive predicate [translation] Nourrir [feed] Inse rer [insert] Quitter [exit] Cuisiner avec [cook with] Patiner sur [skate on] Travailler dans [work in] Suivre [follow] De chirer [rip] Marcher avec [walk with] Voyager a ` [travel to] Faire briller [polish] Utiliser un marteau pour frapper [hammer]
a

Nonrestrictive predicate [translation] De crire [describe] Toucher [touch] Aimer [like] Trouver [find] Regarder [look at] Chercher [look for] Regarder [look at] Chercher [look for] Toucher [touch] De crire [describe] Aimer [like] Trouver [find]

French target (phonetic transcription)a [translation] Poule (pul, pl) [chicken] Clef (kle) [key] Magasin (magaz ) [store] Huile ( il, Il) [oil] Glace (glas) [ice] Fabrique (fabRik, fabRIk) [factory] Fle ` che (fl ) [arrow] Fiche (fi , fI) [sheet/document] Canne (kan) [cane] Lune (lyn, lYn) [moon] Bague (bag) [ring] Clou (klu) [nail]

English competitor Pool Clay Magazine Wheel Glass Fabric Flesh Fish Can Loon Bag Clue

Where different, transcriptions for Standard French precede those for Canadian French.

Received November 17, 2008 Revision received February 24, 2009 Accepted March 16, 2009