Psycholinguistic processes underlying receptive multilingualism

In the Netherlands, Dutch is not only the official language of the country, but also the main language used in public administration and institutions. This is the case in most Dutch universities, and it is usually experienced as a language barrier by international students and staff members who cannot fully participate in university co-determination bodies. A possible solution to this is to adopt a receptive multilingual approach when communicating. Subproject 2 investigates the psycholinguistic processes underlying receptive multilingualism for both pedagogical and communicative purposes. [Click here for Dutch webpage / Klik hier voor Nederlandse webpagina]

Experiment 1 – Auditory word recognition and language switching

Experiment 1 focuses on two domains that have been widely investigated in the bi/multilingual literature: word recognition and language switching. The aim is to investigate which cognitive processes underlie auditory word recognition and language switching in English when Dutch L2 has been taught and learned receptively. Moreover, since Dutch is for some of these learners either their second or third language, particular attention is taken to lexical processing by these two different groups, as it has been suggested that the processing of a native and a non-native language (L1 and L2) can be different from that of two non-native languages (L2 and L3) (Aparicio & Lavaur, 2014, 2016; Aparicio et al., 2012).   

Experiment 2 – Lexical alignment

Experiment 2, examines the extent to which communicative success (measured by the degree of lexical alignment between interlocutors) can be achieved within an RM interaction. The results obtained will both contribute to the discussion within bilingual word retrieval models (e.g., Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002; Dijkstra et al., 2019) and inform methods of receptive language teaching and learning.  

Get to know the researcher

The second subproject is conducted by Postdoc researcher Natalia Rivera-Vera (n.a.riveravera@uu.nl). Natalia completed her doctoral studies at the University of Amsterdam. In her dissertation, entitled “Word Learning: When Associative Learning Meets Social-Pragmatic Expectations”, Natalia investigated the extent to which adults process and integrate perceptual data and social-pragmatic information in (cross-situational) word learning. Psycholinguistics and experimental pragmatics are her areas of expertise.