ABSTRACT

This study investigated cross-linguistic priming in six-year-old, balanced Spanish-English bilinguals (n = 60). We examined bilinguals’ production of transitive forms in English (active, passive) after exposure to Spanish transitives (Study 1; M age = 6.2 years; SD = 0.3) and their production of transitive forms in Spanish (active, passive) after exposure to English transitives (Study 2; M age = 5.9 years; SD = 0.5). We varied whether the verb matched between the modeled prime sentences and target drawings that children described. Results revealed two-way, cross-linguistic structural priming effects, from Spanish to English as well as English to Spanish. Further, the results did not show evidence of a lexical boost in priming. These findings suggest that by school age, balanced bilingual children have generalized, shared syntactic representations and that language experience may influence the strength of the connections between these syntactic representations and lexical items.

摘要

这项研究调查了六岁的西班牙语-英语平衡双语者（n  = 60）中的跨语言启动。我们研究了双语者在接触西班牙可及物后的英语（主动，被动）和物形式的产生（研究1； M年龄= 6.2岁； SD = 0.3）以及他们在接触西班牙可及物后的英语（主动，被动）和物形式的产生英语及物动词（研究2； M年龄= 5.9岁； SD = 0.5）。我们改变了动词是否在建模的主要句子和目标之间匹配孩子们描述的图纸。结果显示，从西班牙语到英语以及从英语到西班牙语，双向，跨语言的结构启动效应。此外，结果没有显示出启动词法的证据。这些发现表明，到了学龄期，平衡的双语儿童已经普遍化，共享了句法表征，并且语言经验可能会影响这些句法表征与词汇项目之间联系的强度。