School of Foreign Languages, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China.
School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, 200400, China.
Cogn Process. 2023 Aug;24(3):415-424. doi: 10.1007/s10339-023-01137-1. Epub 2023 Apr 20.
Previous research on language switching has debated whether high-proficient bilinguals exhibit symmetrical costs and one underlying reason for which may be the potential influence of cross-linguistic characteristics. The previous conflicting findings suggest their impact on language switching needs to be further investigated. In this study, we recruited 36 high-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals and investigated the effect of cross-linguistic similarity on the switching of quantifier expressions under three switch conditions. The results showed that switch costs were significantly greater when the quantifier expression was similar between Chinese and English than when it was different. Larger switch costs were found in the alternate switch condition than those in the non-switch or random switch conditions. In addition, participants exhibited larger switch costs when switching to the first language than when switching to the second language. The results suggest that the similarity of quantifier expressions between the first language and the second language would create more competition and thus induce larger switch costs in phrase-level language switching, which may be derived from the inner word recognition system of the mental lexicon. This study further improves the relevant theories on the origin of switch costs by supporting the Language Non-Specific Selection Hypothesis.
先前关于语言转换的研究争论了高熟练度双语者是否表现出对称的代价，其中一个潜在的原因可能是跨语言特征的潜在影响。先前相互矛盾的研究结果表明，需要进一步研究它们对语言转换的影响。在这项研究中，我们招募了 36 名高熟练度的中英双语者，并在三种转换条件下研究了跨语言相似性对量词表达转换的影响。结果表明，当量词在中文和英文之间相似时，转换代价明显更大，而当它们不同时，转换代价则较小。在交替转换条件下，转换代价大于非转换或随机转换条件下的转换代价。此外，当从第一语言转换到第二语言时，参与者表现出更大的转换代价。结果表明，第一语言和第二语言之间的量词表达相似性会产生更多的竞争，从而导致短语层面语言转换中的更大转换代价，这可能源自心理词汇的内在单词识别系统。本研究通过支持语言非特定选择假设，进一步完善了关于转换代价起源的相关理论。
