Testing the Cognitive Load Hypothesis: Repair Rates and Usage in a Bilingual Community
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Jenny Dumont
Abstract
It has been assumed that bilingual speakers have a heavier cognitive load than monolinguals, which may be responsible for language change such as simplification, overgeneralization, transfer and code-switching. While the cognitive load hypothesis is interesting, the hypothesis has not been empirically tested using naturally occurring speech. Using data from a Spanish/English bilingual community, this study operationalizes and tests the cognitive load hypothesis by studying disfluencies in two groups of Spanish speakers with varying degrees of English proficiency. Specifically, truncated utterances and the mechanisms of linguistic repair involved in fixing these disfluencies are examined. The results show measurable differences between the two groups. The group of speakers with higher bilingual proficiency, who are predicted to have a heavier cognitive load, shows a significantly higher rate of repair; additionally the syntactic patterns and types of repair are significantly different between the more bilingual and the less bilingual speakers, suggesting that they use repair in divergent ways. There is not sufficient evidence, however, to conclude that the more bilingual speakers have a higher cognitive load.
© 2015 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Front Matter
- Contents
- Research Articles
- Gender Assignment and Agreement in L2 Spanish: The Effects of Morphological Marking, Animacy, and Gender
- A Case of Grammaticalization in the Use of the Perfect for the Preterite in Bilbao Spanish
- Testing the Cognitive Load Hypothesis: Repair Rates and Usage in a Bilingual Community
- Perceptions of Second Person Singular Pronoun Use in San Salvador, El Salvador
- Intervocalic Tap and Trill Production in the Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language
- Book Reviews
- Martínez-Cachero Laseca: La enseñanza del español en el sistema educativo brasileño / O ensino do espanhol no sistema educativo brasileiro.
- State Of The Discipline. Topic: Pidgin And Creole Studies
- Pidgin and Creole Studies: Their Interface with Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics
- Viewpoints. Topic: The Place of Naturallyoccurring and Elicited Data in Linguistic Studies
- The Necessity of Both Naturally-Occurring and Elicited Data in Spanish Intonational Phonology
- Beyond “Naturalistic”: On the Role of Task Characteristics and the Importance of Multiple Elicitation Methods
- Naturalistic and Elicited Data in Grammatical Studies of Codeswitching
- The Place of Conversational Data in Spanish Syntax: Topic, Focus, and Word Order
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Front Matter
- Contents
- Research Articles
- Gender Assignment and Agreement in L2 Spanish: The Effects of Morphological Marking, Animacy, and Gender
- A Case of Grammaticalization in the Use of the Perfect for the Preterite in Bilbao Spanish
- Testing the Cognitive Load Hypothesis: Repair Rates and Usage in a Bilingual Community
- Perceptions of Second Person Singular Pronoun Use in San Salvador, El Salvador
- Intervocalic Tap and Trill Production in the Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language
- Book Reviews
- Martínez-Cachero Laseca: La enseñanza del español en el sistema educativo brasileño / O ensino do espanhol no sistema educativo brasileiro.
- State Of The Discipline. Topic: Pidgin And Creole Studies
- Pidgin and Creole Studies: Their Interface with Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics
- Viewpoints. Topic: The Place of Naturallyoccurring and Elicited Data in Linguistic Studies
- The Necessity of Both Naturally-Occurring and Elicited Data in Spanish Intonational Phonology
- Beyond “Naturalistic”: On the Role of Task Characteristics and the Importance of Multiple Elicitation Methods
- Naturalistic and Elicited Data in Grammatical Studies of Codeswitching
- The Place of Conversational Data in Spanish Syntax: Topic, Focus, and Word Order
