Specific and recognition strategies used by Spanish, English and bilingual subjects
This research was prompted by some intriguing results obtained in several experiments which showed that Spanish Ss seemed to be significantly slower and produced more errors in word recognition than English Ss (Meara et al, 1985). I suggested that the orthographic depth variable - Spanish has a shallow orthography whereas English has a deep one- might be the linguistic source of those experimental differences. Spanish Ss may be ~Phonecian~ readers whereas English may be ~Chinese~ (Henderson, 1982). Our initial experimental results confirmed the existence of significant differences. English Ss were more sensitive to positional and sequential information, relying particularly in initial and final positions of arrays. This suggests that in English whole word encoding wins the recognition race. Spanish Ss were slower and made more errors. The experimental technique consisted in detecting the presence of a target letter in an array. We subsequently introduced a lexical decision task. Thus Ss had to access their mental lexicon and retrieve the lexical entry into awareness. The results showed that Spanish Ss were not slower, in fact they were faster than English Ss but not significantly. We concluded that the previous
Estebanez, S.
Specific and recognition strategies used by Spanish, English and bilingual subjects. This research was prompted by some intriguing results obtained in several experiments which showed that Spanish Ss seemed to be significantly slower and produced more errors in word recognition than English Ss (Meara et al, 1985). I suggested that the orthographic depth variable - Spanish has a shallow orthography whereas English has a deep one- might be the linguistic source of those experimental differences. Spanish Ss may be ~Phonecian~ readers whereas English may be ~Chinese~ (Henderson, 1982). Our initial experimental results confirmed the existence of significant differences. English Ss were more sensitive to positional and sequential information, relying particularly in initial and final positions of arrays. This suggests that in English whole word encoding wins the recognition race. Spanish Ss were slower and made more errors. The experimental technique consisted in detecting the presence of a target letter in an array. We subsequently introduced a lexical decision task. Thus Ss had to access their mental lexicon and retrieve the lexical entry into awareness. The results showed that Spanish Ss were not slower, in fact they were faster than English Ss but not significantly. We concluded that the previous
specific recognition strategy_use spanish_english bilingual subject prompt intriguing obtain several show spanish seem significantly slow produced error word_recognition english suggest orthographic depth variable spanish shallow orthography whereas_english deep might linguistic source experimental difference spanish may reader whereas_english may chinese initial experimental confirm existence significant_difference english sensitive positional sequential information rely particularly initial final position array suggests english whole word encode win recognition race spanish slow make error experimental technique consist detect presence target letter array subsequently introduce lexical_decision task thus access mental_lexicon retrieve lexical_entry awareness show spanish slow fact faster english significantly conclude previous