Viorica Marian - US grants

With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Viorica Marian uses bilingualism as a means for general studies of language and mind, and as an end in itself to understand bilingualism. Sometimes words in different languages sound similar or look the same on paper, and this overlap in form can influence a listener or reader's understanding of language and other mental processes. Dr. Marian records and analyzes eye movements or participants who listen or read language and examines times to respond in simple language tasks. She compares, for example, English monolinguals to Russian-English and German-English bilinguals, to tease out interactions between visual and auditory sources of one or more language. Her research incorporates state-of-the-art eye movement monitoring technology. The funded research has implications for a broad segment of population. The 2000 Census reported 18% of American households speak a language other than English at home, a proportion that is steadily increasing. More directly, this work can benefit bilingual children placed in monolingual classrooms and the project provides research training to graduate and undergraduate students studying linguistically diverse populations.

Description (provided by applicant): The goals of this research are to contribute to understanding the relationship between language and memory, both as general cognitive phenomena and as relevant to bilinguals in particular. Two experiments explore the effect of language on cognitive performance to establish whether language-dependent memory can be observed in semantic retrieval. The phenomenon of language-dependent memory suggests that memories become more accessible when the linguistic environment at retrieval matches the linguistic environment at encoding. Speakers of more than one language are particularly likely to experience language dependence, since their memories are likely to be encoded in different linguistic environments. It is predicted that bilinguals' memory performance will be improved by a match between language of encoding and language of retrieval, and that bilinguals' cognitive performance will benefit from reinstating the linguistic environment present at the time of encoding. The present project extends previous research on language dependent retrieval of episodic memories to language-dependent retrieval of real-world knowledge acquired in everyday life (Experiment 1) and to language-dependent retrieval of information learned in academic settings (Experiment 2). Understanding how language influences memory accessibility may have direct implications for assessment and testing of bilinguals in educational, psychological, medical, and legal settings. Moreover, studying the effects of language on memory in bilinguals may contribute to a general understanding of higher-level cognitive processes, such as how the interaction between language and memory manifests itself, the magnitude of the effects, and what may be some underlying mechanisms.

What determines the success of foreign language learning? With support from the National Science Foundation, Ms. Margarita Kaushanskaya will study this topic in her doctoral dissertation research under the direction of Dr. Viorica Marian. Three questions will be examined. One, is it easier to learn a foreign language when its sounds and letters correspond to the native language? Two, is it easier to learn a foreign language when a learner only hears the foreign language, or when a learner can both hear and read it at the same time? Three, is it easier to learn a foreign language if a learner already has experience acquiring a foreign language? Findings promise to inform the practices of ESL instructors, foreign language educators, speech-language pathologists, and learning disabilities specialists by providing specific guidelines for efficient and successful language learning. This project will also promote participation of under-represented Latino and Asian groups in scientific research.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Broadly defined, the proposed project centers on the relationship between language and cognition, focusing on the consequences of bilingualism for cognitive, linguistic, and developmental processes. The objective of the present work is to understand how using more than one language changes cognitive architecture and impacts general cognitive function. Our previous research demonstrates that auditory input co-activates both languages in parallel during bilingual spoken comprehension via bottom-up cascading activation. Using an interactive activation framework, the proposed project further advances understanding of bilingual spoken language processing by examining the role of top-down activation and the interaction of top- down, bottom-up, and lateral activation during bilingual spoken language comprehension. Four studies utilize eye-movements and other behavioral measures to examine how bilinguals manage co-activation and interaction across the two languages, across modalities (e.g., between spoken and sign languages), across levels (e.g., between segmental and suprasegmental input), and in sentence context. The proposed research also examines cognitive consequences of bilingualism by establishing a direct link between cross-linguistic co- activation and inhibitory control. Theoretically, the proposed research contributes to understanding the complex relationship between language and cognition from the unique vantage point of bilingualism and specifies the interactive nature of top-down, bottom-up and lateral activation in the bilingual cognitive architecture. Addressing broader societal needs, this work has practical implications for the large segment of the American population who speaks a language other than English at home and for whom clinical and educational outcomes can be improved by capitalizing on the interaction and co-activation of two languages. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proportion of non-native English speakers in the United States is rapidly increasing, yet the changing demographic remains under-represented in basic and applied research, posing challenges for providing services to this rapidly-growing segment of the population. The overarching goal of this project is to understand how bilingualism impacts cognition and language and how knowing another language changes the architecture of the cognitive system. Four studies examine how bilinguals understand spoken language and how the two languages interact as a result of top-down, bottom- up, and lateral influences during comprehension. By specifically focusing on parallel activation and cross-linguistic interaction in bilingual language processing, this project advances our understanding of the human linguistic capacity, with implications for intervention strategies with bilinguals.