Language Dominance, Verbal Fluency, and Language Control in two Groups of Russian–English Bilinguals
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Language Dominance, Verbal Fluency, and Interference in Lexical Retrieval
1.2. The Present Study
Hypotheses
- H1: The younger group will be more fluent in the L2 (producing more words in the fluency tasks) than the older group.
- H2: The younger group will be less fluent in the L1 (producing fewer words in the fluency tasks) than the older group.
- H3: The younger more balanced bilingual group (with respect to proficiency) will show better control abilities (resulting in weaker interference effects in the Stroop tasks) than the older group.
- H4: The younger group will be more fluent in the L2 (producing more words in the fluency tasks) than the L1.
- H5: The older group will be more fluent in the L1 (producing more words in the fluency tasks) than the L2.
- H6a: Interference in the bilingual Stroop task will be stronger when caused by within-language conflict than between-language conflict (resulting in higher interference effect scores).
- H6b: Interference will be stronger when caused by conflicting words from the more dominant language than by words from the less dominant language (resulting in higher interference effect scores).
2. Methods
2.1. Participants
2.2. Materials and Procedures
3. Results
3.1. Verbal Fluency
3.1.1. Letter Fluency
3.1.2. Category Fluency
3.2. Stroop Color-Naming
4. Discussion
4.1. Language Dominance and Verbal Fluency
4.2. Language Control—The Suppression of Interference
4.3. Methodological Contributions and Limitations
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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1 | Note that there are intra and extralinguistic approaches to the definition and/or conceptualization of language dominance. See Liceras et al. 2016. |
2 | Note that the M age of the older bilinguals in this study (58) is somewhat lower and the range is wider compared to the “older bilinguals” investigated in other studies, e.g., Rosselli et al. 2000 (61) or Ivanova et al. 2016 (77). Most of the older-group participants in the present study might better be characterized as mid-age. |
Characteristics | Older Group | Younger Group | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
(n = 21) | (n = 22) | |||
M | SD | M | SD | |
Age at time of study | 58 | 17.35 | 27.5 | 6.87 |
Age at arrival in U.S. | 42.95 | 13.92 | 11.57 | 5.71 |
Years of formal education in U.S. | 2.18 | 1.65 | 10.71 | 3.78 |
Length of residence in U.S. | 14.09 | 4.01 | 14.95 | 5.42 |
Proficiency in Russian, time of arrival | 6.87 | 0.48 | 5.57 | 1.98 |
Proficiency in English, time of arrival | 1.93 | 1.16 | 2.01 | 1.68 |
Proficiency in Russian, time of study | 6.85 | 0.44 | 5.73 | 1.36 |
Proficiency in English, time of study | 4.4 | 1.29 | 6.64 | 0.61 |
Russian usage domains, time of study | 11.59 | 1.44 | 6.9 | 3.59 |
English usage domains, time of study | 5.59 | 3.51 | 11.29 | 2 |
Синий | Желтый | Красный | Зеленый | Желтый | Синий | Зеленый | Красный |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
in green | in red | in blue | in yellow | in red | in green | in yellow | in blue |
Blue | Yellow | Red | Green | Yellow | Blue | Green | Red |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
in green | in red | in blue | in yellow | in red | in green | in yellow | in blue |
Older Group (n = 21) | Younger Group (n = 22) | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
First Letter Cue | M | SD | M | SD | F | p |
Russian Д | 11.41 | 3.67 | 10.57 | 5.16 | 0.38 | 0.54 |
Russian О | 9.5 | 4.29 | 8.71 | 4.27 | 0.36 | 0.55 |
Russian С | 13.77 | 4.02 | 11.86 | 5.69 | 1.64 | 0.21 |
All Russian letter cues ДОС | 11.56 | 3.62 | 10.38 | 4.41 | 0.92 | 0.34 |
English F | 8.5 | 4.04 | 10.48 | 2.98 | 3.3 | 0.08 |
English A | 7.14 | 3.52 | 9.52 | 4.39 | 3.89 | 0.06 |
English S | 10 | 4.6 | 13.9 | 4.07 | 8.64 | 0.01 ** |
All English letter cues FAS | 8.55 | 3.29 | 11.3 | 3.3 | 7.51 | 0.01 ** |
Older Group (n = 21) | Younger Group (n = 22) | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Category cue | M | SD | M | SD | F | p |
Animals in Russian | 18.41 | 6.49 | 15.62 | 7.68 | 1.66 | 0.20 |
Clothing in Russian | 18.55 | 5.98 | 17.81 | 6.55 | 0.15 | 0.70 |
Both categories in Russian | 18.48 | 5.65 | 16.71 | 6.79 | 0.86 | 0.36 |
Animals in English | 12.73 | 5.9 | 18.24 | 5.08 | 10.74 | 0.00 ** |
Clothing in English | 13.14 | 4.22 | 19.43 | 4.57 | 22.03 | 0.00 ** |
Both categories in English | 12.93 | 4.4 | 18.83 | 4.19 | 20.27 | 0.00 ** |
Older Group (n = 21) | Younger Group (n = 22) | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Naming Task in Language (Cues) | M | SD | M | SD | F | p |
Color in Russian (circles) | 6.05 | 1.99 | 4.86 | 1.62 | 5.33 | 0.03 * |
Color in Russian (English words) | 8.10 | 3.32 | 7.90 | 4.31 | 0.47 | 0.50 |
Color in Russian (Russian words) | 8.33 | 2.56 | 7.14 | 2.22 | 3.55 | 0.07 |
Color in Russian (Mean) | 7.49 | 2.32 | 6.63 | 2.36 | 2.35 | 0.13 |
Interference in Russian (English words) | 2.05 | 2.52 | 3.05 | 2.22 | 1.17 | 0.29 |
Interference in Russian (Russian words) | 2.29 | 2.08 | 2.29 | 2.35 | 0.00 | 1.00 |
Color in English (circles) | 7.57 | 3.99 | 4.43 | 1.33 | 12.79 | 0.00 ** |
Color in English (English words) | 11.00 | 7.04 | 7.48 | 1.97 | 5.52 | 0.02 * |
Color in English (Russian words) | 9.62 | 4.22 | 6.52 | 2.18 | 8.59 | 0.01 ** |
Color in English (Mean) | 9.40 | 4.84 | 6.14 | 1.21 | 8.82 | 0.00 ** |
Interference in English (English words) | 3.43 | 3.83 | 3.05 | 2.01 | 0.16 | 0.69 |
Interference in English (Russian words) | 2.05 | 2.71 | 2.10 | 2.57 | 0.00 | 0.95 |
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Shishkin, E.; Ecke, P. Language Dominance, Verbal Fluency, and Language Control in two Groups of Russian–English Bilinguals. Languages 2018, 3, 27. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030027
Shishkin E, Ecke P. Language Dominance, Verbal Fluency, and Language Control in two Groups of Russian–English Bilinguals. Languages. 2018; 3(3):27. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030027
Chicago/Turabian StyleShishkin, Elena, and Peter Ecke. 2018. "Language Dominance, Verbal Fluency, and Language Control in two Groups of Russian–English Bilinguals" Languages 3, no. 3: 27. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages3030027