Automaticity of lexical access in Filipino bilinguals and multilinguals: Evidence from a modified Stroop task

• Main Author: Manzano, Japhet E.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2023
• Subjects: Psycholinguistics—Ability testing; Multilingualism; Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etdm_deal/21; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etdm_deal/article/1017/viewcontent/2023_Manzano_Redacted.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

Studies have consistently examined the cognitive advantages of bilinguals when compared to monolinguals. However, the existence and nature of these advantages remain subject to ongoing debate. Recent studies expanded this assumption, claiming that the presence of cognitive benefits in bilinguals may also be found in multilinguals. There were attempts to confirm it by demonstrating that bilingual and multilingual individuals may exhibit comparable performance in both linguistic and non-linguistic tasks, while others claim that multilinguals tend to outperform bilinguals on those tasks. Using a modified Stroop task that follows a picture-word paradigm, the present study investigated the latter assumption by determining whether multilinguals have better lexical processing abilities compared to bilinguals or vice-versa and whether having multiple language systems affects automatic lexical access. Specifically, the present study investigated whether or not Filipino Tagalog-English bilinguals and Maranao-Tagalog-English multilinguals show automaticity during lexical access. The difference in lexical retrieval processing of bilingual and multilingual language groups based on word frequency effects, as well as the difference between bilingual and multilingual language groups’ overall lexical retrieval processing based on age were tested. The findings revealed three main outcomes. First, descriptive statistics revealed that both language groups facilitated more efficient automatic processing on high- than low-frequency words with multilinguals found to be slightly more efficient than bilinguals. An extended descriptive analysis of the overall performance of both language groups also showed that multilinguals performed slightly more efficiently than bilinguals. Meanwhile, age-group comparison descriptively revealed that adolescent participants were observed to have performed more efficiently than adults. Second, inferential analyses revealed that both language groups showed no difference in processing high-frequency words, as well as in their overall performance in processing low- and high-frequency words, suggesting that both bilinguals and multilinguals exhibit similar levels of automaticity during lexical access. Lastly, a within-group comparison based on age revealed a significant difference between adolescents and adults in lexical processing. These findings corroborate both the frequency-lag hypothesis and the competition model by demonstrating the word frequency effect and showcasing how age significantly affects automatic lexical processing.