Cross-language Competition In Bilingual Semantic Processing: Effect Of Working Memory Capacity

The study of bilingual mental lexicon has now been a major concern in second language acquisition and psycholinguistic research. It has been generally accepted that semantic and lexical information in both L1 mental lexicon and L2 mental lexicon compete for retrieval in a non-selective manner, but it remains unresolved how this competition is controlled and how the targeted language performance is achieved. In recent years working memory capacity as a general cognitive ability has been investigated as a control power in the online processing of bilinguals. However, studies on it are few, and findings vary, and common belief is yet to be established. This study aims at probing into the working memory capacity effect in a series of language tasks and investigating whether the Inhibitory Control Model can be a workable control mechanism which can realize the targeted language task through its inhibition. Two groups of students were chosen from three classes to conduct two experiments. They were controlled on their working memory capacity and vocabulary knowledge before they entered the experiment tasks. A picture naming task and a picture-word interference task were adopted as the tasks to examine working memory capacity effect. The working memory capacity effect on language processing was expected to display difference for tasks of different complexity. The results of the experiments indicated no significant working memory capacity effect in both experimental tasks. The weak representation and practical inactivation of L2 mental lexicon observed in the analyses of Distractor-language effect were proposed as an explanation of this null effect. At the same time, the finding that bilinguals with very unbalanced L1 and L2 vocabulary knowledge also reveal great difference in the representation and organization of the L1 and L2 mental lexicon calls for a great need to explain the nature of L2 learners'mental lexicon.