ERIC Number: EJ1048746
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jan
Pages: 30
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0267-6583
EISSN: N/A
Visual Attention and Quantifier-Spreading in Heritage Russian Bilinguals
Sekerina, Irina A.; Sauermann, Antje
Second Language Research, v31 n1 p75-104 Jan 2015
It is well established in language acquisition research that monolingual children and adult second language learners misinterpret sentences with the universal quantifier "every" and make quantifier-spreading errors that are attributed to a preference for a match in number between two sets of objects. The present Visual World eye-tracking study tested bilingual heritage Russian-English adults and investigated how they interpret of sentences like "Every alligator lies in a bathtub" in both languages. Participants performed a sentence-picture verification task while their eye movements were recorded. Pictures showed three pairs of alligators in bathtubs and two extra objects: elephants (Control condition), bathtubs (Overexhaustive condition), or alligators (Underexhaustive condition). Monolingual adults performed at ceiling in all conditions. Heritage language (HL) adults made 20% q-spreading errors, but only in the Overexhaustive condition, and when they made an error they spent more time looking at the two extra bathtubs during the Verb region. We attribute q-spreading in HL speakers to cognitive overload caused by the necessity to integrate conflicting sources of information, i.e. the spoken sentences in their weaker, heritage, language and attention-demanding visual context, that differed with respect to referential salience.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Second Language Learning, Monolingualism, Russian, English (Second Language), Language Processing, Adults, Native Language, Error Analysis (Language), Language Research, Eye Movements, Control Groups, Form Classes (Languages), Visual Stimuli, Pictorial Stimuli, Task Analysis, Undergraduate Students
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New York
Grant or Contract Numbers: 0137851