Resumen de How country of origin and stimuli language influence visual word recognition in bilingual children

Sara Incera, Carmen Hevia Tuero, Inés E. Martín, Paz Suárez Coalla

• Aims and objectives:

  We used mouse tracking to determine how country of origin and stimuli language influence visual word recognition in bilingual children.

  Methodology:

  Children attending bilingual schools in Spain and the USA completed a lexical decision task in English. The task included real English words (e.g., true), and pseudohomophones following Spanish (e.g., tru) and English (e.g., troo) orthographical rules.

  Data and analysis:

  Bilingual children from both countries performed worse when responding to English pseudohomophones (within-language interference) than Spanish pseudohomophones (between-language interference).

  Findings/conclusions:

  The children from the USA outperformed the children from Spain in almost every measure. Interestingly, their mouse trajectories followed a different pattern.

  Originality:

  When responding to pseudohomophones, children from the USA showed a pronounced initial deviation toward the incorrect response (likely due to a strong activation of the phonology of the real English word) followed by a very effective corrective movement (likely due to an orthographic verification mechanism).

  Significance:

  Mouse tracking provides novel insights regarding language activation in bilingual readers.