Tracking Bilingual Activation in the Processing of Lexical Stress.

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of stress placement on the processing of English-Spanish cognates by native Spanish speakers and intermediate-to-advanced English speaking second-language learners of Spanish using a visual-world eye-tracking experiment in Spanish. Growth-curve analyses on competitor fixations reveal cognate-status and stress-mismatch effects for native Spanish speakers, and they reveal cognate-status and stress-mismatch effects, and an interaction between the two for Spanish learners. This suggests that both groups use stress as a cue for word recognition, and that the English stress pattern affects the processing of Spanish words only for the native speakers of English.