Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Julieta Laurino | Email: julilaurino@gmail.com
Julieta Laurino1°2°, Laura Kaczer1°, Clara D. Martin3°4°
1° Departamento de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Celular. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2° Instituto de Fisiología, Biología Molecular y Neurociencias. CONICET. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3° Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language (BCBL), Mikeletegi Pasealekua, 69, 20009, Donostia-San Sebastián, Gipuzkoa, Spain.
4° Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain.
Understanding words appears effortless, yet we often encounter ambiguous input for which context information is crucial for comprehension. Bilinguals face a unique challenge in this regard, as they frequently switch between their languages, and thus need to integrate context across them. However, our understanding of the mechanisms that enable cross-lingual context-to-word interaction remains limited. In our study, we evaluated whether global semantic context in the second language (L2) influences word processing in the first language (L1) and how this effect interacts with semantic ambiguity. We recorded pupil diameter in Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 37) during a semantic relatedness task, where an ambiguous or non-ambiguous target word in Spanish (L1) appeared. The target word was immediately preceded by a short text in English (L2) or Spanish (L1) that was thematically related or unrelated to the target word. Results showed that target words were processed more accurately, faster, and with reduced neurocognitive demands (i.e., smaller pupil dilation) when preceded by a related context, for both L1 and L2 texts. Taken together, these results evidence a cross-lingual effect of global semantic context, which facilitates and reduces neurocognitive demands during word processing. In addition, they extend the literature demonstrating that bilinguals have one integrated lexicon in which lexical access is not language-selective.