Bilingualism and Tip-of-the-Tongue State: Influence of Written Language Processing

Details

Supervisors

Szmalec, Arnaud

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en logopédie, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

This master thesis explores one of the most frustrating language production difficulty bilinguals may encounter, the tip-of-the-tongue state. The latest psycholinguistic studies on the subject found that a brief exposure to language production in L2 had subsequent impacts on lexical retrieval in L1, in other words, increased TOT rates in bilinguals. The goal of our study was to assess if the same interference effect, coming from written language, would elicit such an increase of TOT rates. To test the consequences of such exposure, we conducted three experimental tasks on 29 French-English bilinguals: two picture naming tasks in French (L1) before and after either watching a movie or reading a text in English (L2). Our assumptions were that phonological mediation would support co- activation of the non-target representation, potentially causing more TOTs. Our results showed that the movie condition showed significant greater TOT rates and longer response times after explosion to the movie. Although the same effect is observed for the reading condition, we were not able to show significant differences. Our findings support the cross- language hypothesis and the blocking model of TOT when exposure to the second language comes from language production. So far, we are not able to show a cross-modality effect of inference.