Bimodal Bilingualism and the Frequency-Lag Hypothesis

Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Empirical Articles Bimodal Bilingualism and the Frequency-Lag Hypothesis Karen Emmorey*,1, Jennifer A. F. Petrich1, Tamar H. Gollan2 1San Diego State University 2University of California, San Diego Received July 13, 2012; revisions received August 28, 2012; accepted September 5, 2012 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jdsde/article/18/1/1/513103 by guest on 28 September 2021 The frequency-lag hypothesis proposes that bilinguals Werner, 2002; Portocarrero, Burright, & Donovick, 2007; have slowed lexical retrieval relative to monolinguals and in Rosselli et al., 2000), name pictures more slowly (Gollan, their nondominant language relative to their dominant lan- Montoya, Fennema-Notestine, & Morris, 2005; Gollan, guage, particularly for low-frequency words. These effects arise because bilinguals divide their language use between Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008; Ivanova & Costa, 2 languages and use their nondominant language less fre- 2008), and name fewer pictures correctly on standardized quently. We conducted a picture-naming study with hearing naming tests such as the Boston Naming Test (Kohnert, American Sign Language (ASL)–English bilinguals (bimodal Hernandez, & Bates, 1998; Roberts, Garcia, Desrochers, bilinguals), deaf signers, and English-speaking monolinguals. & Hernandez, 2002; Gollan, Fennema-Notestine, As predicted by the frequency-lag hypothesis, bimodal bilinguals were slower, less accurate, and exhibited a larger fre- Montoya, & Jernigan, 2007). Crucially, bilingual nam- quency effect when naming pictures in ASL as compared with ing disadvantages are observed even when bilinguals are English (their dominant language) and as compared with deaf tested exclusively in their dominant language (e.g., Gollan signers. For English there was no difference in naming laten- & Acenas, 2004; Gollan, Montoya et al., 2005; and first- cies, error rates, or frequency effects for bimodal bilinguals as compared with monolinguals. Neither age of ASL acquisi- learned language; Ivanova & Costa, 2008). However, tion nor interpreting experience affected the results; picture- bilinguals are not disadvantaged on all tasks. For exam- naming accuracy and frequency effects were equivalent for ple, bilinguals classify pictures (as either human-made deaf signers and English monolinguals. Larger frequency or natural kinds) as quickly as monolinguals (Gollan, effects in ASL relative to English for bimodal bilinguals sug- Montoya et al., 2005), and bilingual disadvantages also do gests that they are affected by a frequency lag in ASL. The absence of a lag for English could reflect the use of mouthing not generalize to all language tasks (e.g., bilinguals are not and/or code-blending, which may shield bimodal bilinguals disadvantaged for production of proper names; Gollan, from the lexical slowing observed for spoken language bilin- Bonanni, & Montoya, 2005). In some nonlinguistic tasks, guals in the dominant language. bilinguals exhibit significant processing advantages. For example, spoken language bilinguals are faster to resolve More than a decade of research has established that spo- conflict between competing responses (see Bialystok, ken language bilingualism entails subtle disadvantages in Craik, Green, & Gollan, 2009, for review). lexical retrieval. Specifically, when compared with their Gollan and colleagues propose a frequency-lag monolingual peers, bilinguals who know two spoken lan- account of slowed naming in bilinguals (also known as guages have more tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) retrieval fail- the “weaker links” account), which draws on the observa- ures (Gollan & Acenas, 2004; Gollan & Silverberg, 2001), tion that by virtue of speaking each of the languages they have reduced category fluency (Gollan, Montoya, & know only part of the time, bilinguals necessarily speak each of their languages less often than do monolinguals *Correspondence should be sent to Karen Emmorey, Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience, 6495 Alvarado Road, Suite 200, (Gollan et al., 2008, 2011). Because bilinguals use words San Diego, CA 92120 (e-mail: [email protected]). in each language less frequently, lexical representations © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/deafed/ens034 For Permissions, please email: [email protected] Advance Access publication October 22, 2012 2 Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 18:1 January 2013 in both languages will have accumulated less practice rel- et al., 2008, for discussion). Recently, Pyers, Gollan, ative to monolinguals. Therefore, bilinguals are hypoth- and Emmorey (2009) found that bimodal bilinguals esized to exhibit slower lexical retrieval times because of exhibited more lexical retrieval failures (TOTs) than the same mechanism that leads to frequency effects in monolingual English speakers and the same TOT rate monolinguals, that is, words that are used frequently are as Spanish–English bilinguals, suggesting that bimodal more accessible than words that are used infrequently bilinguals are affected by frequency lag. However, (e.g., Forster & Chambers, 1973; Oldfield & Wingfield, bimodal bilinguals also exhibited slightly better lexical 1965). Because small differences in frequency of use can retrieval success than the unimodal bilinguals on other have profound effects on lexical accessibility at the lower measures (e.g., they produced more correct responses end of the frequency range (Murray & Forster, 2004), and reported fewer negative or “false” TOTs). Pyers the frequency-lag hypothesis predicts that the bilingual et al. (2009) attributed this in-between pattern of lexi- disadvantage should be particularly large for low-fre- cal retrieval success for bimodal bilinguals to more fre- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jdsde/article/18/1/1/513103 by guest on 28 September 2021 quency words (and relatively small for high-frequency quent use of English, possibly due to the unique ability words). Stated differently, bilinguals should show larger to code-blend. Thus, the predictions of the frequency- frequency effects than monolinguals. Similarly, within lag hypothesis may not hold for English for bimodal bilinguals’ two languages, because the nondominant bilinguals. language is used less frequently than the dominant lan- In addition, we investigated whether bimodal guage, the frequency-lag hypothesis also predicts that bilinguals exhibit slower lexical retrieval times for ASL bilinguals should exhibit larger frequency effects in signs and a larger ASL frequency effect as compared their nondominant than in their dominant language. with deaf signers who use ASL as their primary Several studies have confirmed this prediction for vis- language. Following Emmorey et al. (2008), we suggest ual word recognition (e.g., Duyck, Vanderelst, Desmet, that ASL is the nondominant language for the great & Hartsuiker, 2008) and picture naming (Gollan et al., majority of bimodal bilinguals, even for Children of 2008, 2011; Ivanova & Costa, 2008). Deaf Adults (CODAs) who acquire ASL from birth In this study, we investigated whether the fre- within deaf signing families. Although CODAs may quency-lag hypothesis holds for bimodal bilinguals be ASL dominant as young children, English rapidly who have acquired a spoken language, English, and becomes the dominant language due to immersion in a signed language, American Sign Language (ASL). an English-speaking environment outside the home. Although deaf ASL signers are bilingual in English (to Such switched dominance also occurs for many spoken varying degrees), we reserve the term “bimodal bilin- language bilinguals living in the United States (e.g., gual” for hearing ASL–English bilinguals who acquired for Spanish–English bilinguals; Kohnert, Bates, & spoken English primarily through audition and with- Hernandez, 1999). In contrast, ASL can be argued to out special training. Using a picture-naming task, we be the dominant language for deaf signers, who sign explored whether bimodal bilinguals exhibit slower ASL more often than they speak English. If these lexical retrieval times for spoken words and a larger assumptions about language dominance are correct, frequency effect as compared with English-speaking the frequency-lag hypothesis makes the following monolinguals. Unlike spoken language bilinguals (i.e., predictions: unimodal bilinguals), bimodal bilinguals do not necessarily divide their language use between two languages 1. Bimodal bilinguals will exhibit slower ASL- because they can—and often do—code-blend, that is, naming times than deaf signers and slower produce ASL signs and English words at the same English naming times than monolingual English time (Bishop, 2006; Emmorey, Borinstein, Thompson, speakers. & Gollan, 2008; Petitto et al., 2001). Code-blending is 2. Bimodal bilinguals will exhibit a larger ASL a form of language mixing in which, typically, one or frequency effect than deaf ASL signers and a more ASL signs accompany an English utterance (in larger English frequency effect than monolin- this case, English is the Matrix language; see Emmorey gual English speakers. Bilingualism and the Frequency-Lag Hypothesis 3 3. Bimodal bilinguals will exhibit a larger fre- reflection of frequency of use for signed languages and quency effect for ASL than for English. will suggest that the lack of overlap found by Johnston 4. Late bilinguals (those who acquired ASL in (2012) may be due to deficiencies in the corpus data— adulthood) will

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