Acquiring an artificial logographic orthography : the beneficial effects of a logographic L1 background and bilinguality

RIS ID

63200

Publication Details

Ehrich, J. F. & Meuter, R. F. (2009). Acquiring an artificial logographic orthography : the beneficial effects of a logographic L1 background and bilinguality. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 40 (5), 711-745.

Abstract

To date, studies have focused on the acquisition of alphabetic second languages in alphabetic first language (L1) users, demonstrating significant transfer effects. The present study examines the process from a reverse perspective, comparing logographic (Mandarin-Chinese) and alphabetic (English) L1 users in the acquisition of an artificial logographic script to determine whether similar language-specific advantageous transfer effects occurred. Chinese- English bilinguals, English-French bilinguals, and English monolinguals learned a small set of symbols (six nouns and six verbs) in an artificial logographic script. A lexical decision task on the artificial symbols revealed markedly faster response times in the Chinese-English bilinguals, indicating a logographic transfer effect suggestive of a language experience- specific advantage. A syntactic decision task evaluated the degree to which the new language was mastered beyond the single word level. No L1-specific transfer effects were found for artificial language strings. However, when carrying out the same task in the native language, both the Chinese-English and the English-French bilinguals outperformed the English monolinguals, indicative of a bilingual processing advantage. The results are discussed in relation to possible differences in processing styles relating to logographic versus alphabetic languages, variably involving visual versus phonological coding.

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022022109338624