engleski

Language Switching in Auditory Processing and Croatian Speakers of English

Studies of auditory perception in bilinguals focus on the interaction between linguistic and non- linguistic factors in language processing. The interaction of bottom-up (linguistic) and top-down (linguistic and non-linguistic) processes in language processing is presented in models built on the basis of the interpretation of experimental research results. The focus is also on the question of language switch control and the roles linguistic and non-linguistic factors have in language switching. This study rests on the proposition put forward in the BIMOLA model (Grosjean 1997) that bottom-up acoustic information specific to one language can speed up the recognition of words in that language in bilingual speech processing, diminishing the language switch cost. The paper studies the influence of sensory information (bottom-up), and contextual information and control processes (top-down) in the auditory processing of isolated English and Croatian words. The results of two groups of speakers differing in their English language proficiency have been compared (C1 and C2 according to CEFR). An auditory language decision task has been carried out in three language sets consisting of mixed and one-language stimulus lists. The interaction of the independent variables of language (Croatian, English), the language set (monolingual, bilingual) and English language proficiency (C1, C2) with regard to the dependent variable of reaction time is investigated. Research results will be used to clarify the language switch control in the auditory processing of these two languages. Due to the phonetic and phonological language specificities of the studied languages, small or insignificant influence of top-down processes on auditory perception is expected. Moreover, it is expected that bottom-up processes will influence the language selectivity of processing and ease the processing strain at the moment of the language switch.

language switch; speech perception; bottom-up processes; top-down processes; Croatian; English

nije evidentirano