The impact of dispositional and situational language balance on bilinguals’ word learning of a third language
Many people learn not just two languages, but three or even more (e.g., as part of their formal education). Nevertheless, the process of learning words in a third language has been relatively little studied. When learning a new word in a third language, a common method is to pair the word with its translation in a familiar language. For a bilingual person, there are two options: They can encode the new word with the translation from their most proficient language (i.e., the first language) or with the translation from their second-most proficient language (i.e., the second language). Existing research findings suggest that learning a new third language via the first language leads to better learning outcomes than learning via the second language. One reason for this so-called first-language mediation advantage could be language control. Language control is the process that translates a person’s more stable language level in each language (i.e., their dispositional language balance) into the language balance required by the situation, leading to bilingual flexibility (e.g., during language switching). When learning words in a third language, language control can reduce interference with the target language by regulating its activation, whereby the activation of the first language may be regulated more effectively than that of the second language. Although it is known that the underlying mechanisms of bilingual flexibility (i.e., language control) regulate how easily a word can be produced in one language compared to another, it has not yet been investigated how they contribute to word acquisition in a third language. This project therefore aims to investigate the extent to which word learning in a third language is influenced by adjustments to situational and dispositional language balance. To this end, unbalanced German-English bilinguals will learn words in a language new to them, either via German or English. In several experiments, we will manipulate how active the participants’ languages are, through both shorter and longer exposures to the second language. Additionally, we will investigate how the original learning context of a word (i.e., through which language it was originally learned) later influences control processes in other language use situations (such as language switching). Finally, we will explore how individual differences in the dispositional and situational language balance of bilinguals predict word learning in a third language. Overall, this project will provide insights into how
bilingual flexibility can be observed in the context of word learning in a third language.