Acesso lexical de bilíngues : o reconhecimento de palavras em espanhol mascaradas por conversas de fundo em distintos idiomas

Abstract

Language comprehension is a complex process, and this complexity is heightened when the listener must focus on a single sound source and suppress competing stimuli in situations of acoustic overload. Although the auditory system filters out irrelevant information and maintains focus on what is relevant (Bronkhorst, 2015), the signal is compromised at the sensory level, so lexical access and comprehension can suffer significant interference. This may occur with greater interference from individuals who speak two languages, as there may be greater competition between the target language and more than one background language (Krizman et al., 2017). Thus, the main objective of this research is to investigate lexical access of the second language (L2) in word recognition in Spanish based on auditory stimulation with different linguistic and acoustic interferences. Specifically, the aim is to a) Investigate the effects of auditory degradation caused by background conversations in different languages: L1, L2, and unknown language; b) To understand the different acoustic and linguistic influences of background conversations during lexical access; and c) To measure differences in lexical processing behavior of intermediate and advanced bilinguals in word recognition and lexical access. Methodologically, the experimental lexical decision task with cross-modal priming was used, with the prime being auditory and degraded by background conversations under different conditions, and the target being visual. The hypothesis guiding this work is that bilingual word processing, in terms of lexical access, is influenced by linguistic facilitation—when a previous stimulus linguistically facilitates the target—and by acoustic degradation, whose operation of this access works as a function of bilingualism and proficiency in the second language. The data suggest that, at the processing level, L2 proficiency interferes with the lexical access of words masked by background conversations. Furthermore, the study verified the existence of the cross-modal priming effect with linguistic facilitation without direct interference from the sensory level, and that this facilitation occurs even with a degraded signal.