ABSTRACT
Imagine that you speak Spanish and English, and your friend asks you in English to hand her something. The beginning sound of the word that names the object (/k/) is compatible with a number of objects within your reach, specifically a cup and a spoon (cuchara in Spanish). What happens in this situation? Do you simply assume that the intended object is the cup because the request was made in English? Although this seems like a reasonable reaction, research suggests that this is not what happens (e.g., Spivey & Marian, 1999). In studies using the visual world paradigm, an array of objects is presented either physically or on a computer screen, and the individual’s eye movements are tracked. These studies demonstrate that bilingual listeners make very brief looks more often to the competitor item (the spoon in our example) than to control items that do not share the initial sound of the word being spoken in either language known to the listener (Marian & Spivey, 2003; Spivey & Marian, 1999). These findings suggest that listeners consider both objects to be possible candidates for their understanding. This and related findings (e.g., Blumenfeld & Marian, 2007; see Chapter 3; Weber & Cutler, 2004) demonstrate that the language system is incredibly well tuned to the options in the environment and entertains multiple alternatives until additional information (e.g., later sounds in the word) disambiguates the situation. This issue, how the language system supports language comprehension in individuals with knowledge of more than one language, will be investigated in detail in this book.
