Leyna Doerr
Pronouns: she/her
Research Mentor(s): Eric Martell
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Psychology / LSA
Program: UROP
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Authors: Leyna Doerr, Eric Martell
Abstract
Previous research on bilingual code-switching investigates how the context of a paragraph and lexical categories (function and content words) affect bilingual code-switch production costs (Gollan & Goldrick, 2018). With this research in mind, the experiment at hand investigates how the predictability of a word and the lexical category of the word affect bilingual code-switch production costs. Participant language proficiency will be measured using the Multilingual Naming Test, or MINT (Gollan et al., 2012). Then, participants (Spanish-English bilinguals) will read code-switched paragraphs aloud and complete a language history questionnaire. The paragraphs consist of all English, all Spanish, or a code-switch at a function or content word. To measure the costs of production we will observe and transcribe reading times, language intrusions, and disfluencies while reading aloud on Zoom. We predict that the predictability of a word will decrease switching costs and higher participant proficiency in both languages will also reduce switching costs. As we have not yet produced results, our predictions may be supported by preliminary data that is yet to come. The preliminary data will be analyzed to produce a more concrete finding. The findings of this experiment may lead to further investigations on the bilingual mind and the types of machinery that are employed to code-switch.
