Albert Costa | ICREA - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Albert Costa
Psychological Science, 2015
Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of th... more Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of these languages must be selected on the basis of some cue. The present study investigated whether the face of an interlocutor can serve as such a cue. Spanish-Catalan and Dutch-French bilinguals were first familiarized with certain faces, each of which was associated with only one language, during simulated Skype conversations. Afterward, these participants performed a language production task in which they generated words associated with the words produced by familiar and unfamiliar faces displayed on-screen. When responding to familiar faces, participants produced words faster if the faces were speaking the same language as in the previous Skype simulation than if the same faces were speaking a different language. Furthermore, this language priming effect disappeared when it became clear that the interlocutors were actually bilingual. These findings suggest that faces can prime a language, but their cuing effect disappears when it turns out that they are unreliable as language cues.
Neuropsychologia, Jan 23, 2015
The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence compreh... more The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence comprehension. We put forward that the differences often observed between L1 and L2 sentence processing may reflect differences on how various types of information are used to process a sentence, and not necessarily differences between native and non-native linguistic systems. Based on the idea that when a cue is missing or distorted, one relies more on other cues available, we hypothesised that late bilinguals favour the cues that they master during sentence processing. To verify this hypothesis we investigated whether late bilinguals take the speaker's identity (inferred by the voice) into account when incrementally processing speech and whether this affects their online interpretation of the sentence. To do so, we adapted Van Berkum, J.J.A., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C.M.J.Y., Kos, M., Hagoort, P., 2008. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 20(4), 580-591, study in which sentences with either semantic vi...
Emotion (Washington, D.C.), Jan 20, 2015
Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, stud... more Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, studies that have assessed whether affective features of words undergo the same processing in a native and nonnative language have provided mixed results: Studies that have found differences between native language (L1) and second language (L2) processing attributed the difference to the fact that L2 learned late in life would not be processed affectively, because affective associations are established during childhood. Other studies suggest that adult learners show similar effects of emotional features in L1 and L2. Differences in affective processing of L2 words can be linked to age and context of learning, proficiency, language dominance, and degree of similarity between L2 and L1. Here, in a lexical decision task on tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words, highly proficient English speakers from typologically different L1s showed the same facilitation in processing emotiona...
Knowledge and Language, 1993
Perception & psychophysics, 1998
In three experiments, listeners detected vowel or consonant targets in lists of CV syllables cons... more In three experiments, listeners detected vowel or consonant targets in lists of CV syllables constructed from five vowels and five consonants. Responses were faster in a predictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables all beginning with the same consonant) than in an unpredictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables beginning with different consonants). In Experiment 1, the listeners' native language was Dutch, in which vowel and consonant repertoires are similar in size. The difference between predictable and unpredictable contexts was comparable for vowel and consonant targets. In Experiments 2 and 3, the listeners' native language was Spanish, which has four times as many consonants as vowels; here effects of an unpredictable consonant context on vowel detection were significantly greater than effects of an unpredictable vowel context on consonant detection. This finding suggests that listeners' processing ...
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2015
Language control refers to the cognitive mechanism that allows bilinguals to correctly speak in o... more Language control refers to the cognitive mechanism that allows bilinguals to correctly speak in one language avoiding interference from the nontarget language. Bilinguals achieve this feat by engaging brain areas closely related to cognitive control. However, 2 questions still await resolution: whether this network is differently engaged when controlling nonlinguistic representations, and whether this network is differently engaged when control is exerted upon a restricted set of lexical representations that were previously used (i.e., local control) as opposed to control of the entire language system (i.e., global control). In the present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated these 2 questions by employing linguistic and nonlinguistic blocked switching tasks in the same bilingual participants. We first report that the left prefrontal cortex is driven similarly for control of linguistic and nonlinguistic representations, suggesting its domain-gen...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2011
Neuropsychologia, 2015
The basal ganglia are critically involved in language control (LC) processes, allowing a bilingua... more The basal ganglia are critically involved in language control (LC) processes, allowing a bilingual to utter correctly in one language without interference from the non-requested language. It has been hypothesized that the neural mechanism of LC closely resembles domain-general executive control (EC). The purpose of the present study is to investigate the integrity of bilingual LC and its overlap with domain-general EC in a clinical population such as individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD), notoriously associated with structural damage in the basal ganglia. We approach these issues in two ways. First, we employed a language switching task to investigate the integrity of LC in a group of Catalan-Spanish bilingual individuals with PD, as compared to a group of matched healthy controls. Second, to test the relationship between domain-general EC and LC we compared the performances of individuals with PD and healthy controls also in a non-linguistic switching task. We highlight tha...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2015
Cognitiva, 2001
ABSTRACT En: Cognitiva Madrid 2001, v. 13, n. 1; p. 3-35 Se investigan el desarrollo temporal de ... more ABSTRACT En: Cognitiva Madrid 2001, v. 13, n. 1; p. 3-35 Se investigan el desarrollo temporal de la codificación fonológica en la producción del lenguaje mediante cinco experimentos. En el Experimento 1 se utilizan una tarea de preparación de la respuesta y observamos que la producción de las palabras bisílabas podía ser facilitada tanto si los hablantes conocían con anterioridad la primera como la segunda sílaba. Los resultados del Experimento 2 se confirma que este efecto estaba sucediendo durante la producción. En los Experimentos 3 y 4, los participantes realizaron una tarea de detección de fonemas sobre palabras elicitadas a partir de la presentación de un dibujo. Los resultados de ambos experimentos mostraron que el fonema inicial de las palabras se detectaba más rápidamente que el resto de posiciones consonánticas, las cuales no diferieron entre sí. El Experimento 5 se utilizó como un control en que los participantes realizaron la tarea estándar de detección de fonemas sobre palabras presentadas auditativamente y que correspondían a los nombres de los dibujos empleados en el experimento 4. Como resultado, se obtuvo un aumento del tiempo de resupesta a medida que la posición del fonema dentro de la palabra se desplazaba hacia la derecha. Se considera conjuntamente, estos resultados ponen en entredicho el presupuesto de que la codificación fonológica es un proceso estrictamente serial, p.29-31
Laboratory phonology 7, Jan 1, 2002
Resumen: En este trabajo presentamos un experimento en el que se explora hasta qué punto el proce... more Resumen: En este trabajo presentamos un experimento en el que se explora hasta qué punto el proceso de selección léxica es sensible a la frecuencia de palabra. Se solicitó a los participantes que denominaran dibujos presentados en dos titos de listas: ...
Psychological Science, 2015
Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of th... more Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of these languages must be selected on the basis of some cue. The present study investigated whether the face of an interlocutor can serve as such a cue. Spanish-Catalan and Dutch-French bilinguals were first familiarized with certain faces, each of which was associated with only one language, during simulated Skype conversations. Afterward, these participants performed a language production task in which they generated words associated with the words produced by familiar and unfamiliar faces displayed on-screen. When responding to familiar faces, participants produced words faster if the faces were speaking the same language as in the previous Skype simulation than if the same faces were speaking a different language. Furthermore, this language priming effect disappeared when it became clear that the interlocutors were actually bilingual. These findings suggest that faces can prime a language, but their cuing effect disappears when it turns out that they are unreliable as language cues.
Neuropsychologia, Jan 23, 2015
The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence compreh... more The present study investigated how pragmatic information is integrated during L2 sentence comprehension. We put forward that the differences often observed between L1 and L2 sentence processing may reflect differences on how various types of information are used to process a sentence, and not necessarily differences between native and non-native linguistic systems. Based on the idea that when a cue is missing or distorted, one relies more on other cues available, we hypothesised that late bilinguals favour the cues that they master during sentence processing. To verify this hypothesis we investigated whether late bilinguals take the speaker's identity (inferred by the voice) into account when incrementally processing speech and whether this affects their online interpretation of the sentence. To do so, we adapted Van Berkum, J.J.A., Van den Brink, D., Tesink, C.M.J.Y., Kos, M., Hagoort, P., 2008. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 20(4), 580-591, study in which sentences with either semantic vi...
Emotion (Washington, D.C.), Jan 20, 2015
Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, stud... more Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, studies that have assessed whether affective features of words undergo the same processing in a native and nonnative language have provided mixed results: Studies that have found differences between native language (L1) and second language (L2) processing attributed the difference to the fact that L2 learned late in life would not be processed affectively, because affective associations are established during childhood. Other studies suggest that adult learners show similar effects of emotional features in L1 and L2. Differences in affective processing of L2 words can be linked to age and context of learning, proficiency, language dominance, and degree of similarity between L2 and L1. Here, in a lexical decision task on tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words, highly proficient English speakers from typologically different L1s showed the same facilitation in processing emotiona...
Knowledge and Language, 1993
Perception & psychophysics, 1998
In three experiments, listeners detected vowel or consonant targets in lists of CV syllables cons... more In three experiments, listeners detected vowel or consonant targets in lists of CV syllables constructed from five vowels and five consonants. Responses were faster in a predictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables all beginning with the same consonant) than in an unpredictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables beginning with different consonants). In Experiment 1, the listeners' native language was Dutch, in which vowel and consonant repertoires are similar in size. The difference between predictable and unpredictable contexts was comparable for vowel and consonant targets. In Experiments 2 and 3, the listeners' native language was Spanish, which has four times as many consonants as vowels; here effects of an unpredictable consonant context on vowel detection were significantly greater than effects of an unpredictable vowel context on consonant detection. This finding suggests that listeners' processing ...
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2015
Language control refers to the cognitive mechanism that allows bilinguals to correctly speak in o... more Language control refers to the cognitive mechanism that allows bilinguals to correctly speak in one language avoiding interference from the nontarget language. Bilinguals achieve this feat by engaging brain areas closely related to cognitive control. However, 2 questions still await resolution: whether this network is differently engaged when controlling nonlinguistic representations, and whether this network is differently engaged when control is exerted upon a restricted set of lexical representations that were previously used (i.e., local control) as opposed to control of the entire language system (i.e., global control). In the present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated these 2 questions by employing linguistic and nonlinguistic blocked switching tasks in the same bilingual participants. We first report that the left prefrontal cortex is driven similarly for control of linguistic and nonlinguistic representations, suggesting its domain-gen...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2011
Neuropsychologia, 2015
The basal ganglia are critically involved in language control (LC) processes, allowing a bilingua... more The basal ganglia are critically involved in language control (LC) processes, allowing a bilingual to utter correctly in one language without interference from the non-requested language. It has been hypothesized that the neural mechanism of LC closely resembles domain-general executive control (EC). The purpose of the present study is to investigate the integrity of bilingual LC and its overlap with domain-general EC in a clinical population such as individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD), notoriously associated with structural damage in the basal ganglia. We approach these issues in two ways. First, we employed a language switching task to investigate the integrity of LC in a group of Catalan-Spanish bilingual individuals with PD, as compared to a group of matched healthy controls. Second, to test the relationship between domain-general EC and LC we compared the performances of individuals with PD and healthy controls also in a non-linguistic switching task. We highlight tha...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2015
Cognitiva, 2001
ABSTRACT En: Cognitiva Madrid 2001, v. 13, n. 1; p. 3-35 Se investigan el desarrollo temporal de ... more ABSTRACT En: Cognitiva Madrid 2001, v. 13, n. 1; p. 3-35 Se investigan el desarrollo temporal de la codificación fonológica en la producción del lenguaje mediante cinco experimentos. En el Experimento 1 se utilizan una tarea de preparación de la respuesta y observamos que la producción de las palabras bisílabas podía ser facilitada tanto si los hablantes conocían con anterioridad la primera como la segunda sílaba. Los resultados del Experimento 2 se confirma que este efecto estaba sucediendo durante la producción. En los Experimentos 3 y 4, los participantes realizaron una tarea de detección de fonemas sobre palabras elicitadas a partir de la presentación de un dibujo. Los resultados de ambos experimentos mostraron que el fonema inicial de las palabras se detectaba más rápidamente que el resto de posiciones consonánticas, las cuales no diferieron entre sí. El Experimento 5 se utilizó como un control en que los participantes realizaron la tarea estándar de detección de fonemas sobre palabras presentadas auditativamente y que correspondían a los nombres de los dibujos empleados en el experimento 4. Como resultado, se obtuvo un aumento del tiempo de resupesta a medida que la posición del fonema dentro de la palabra se desplazaba hacia la derecha. Se considera conjuntamente, estos resultados ponen en entredicho el presupuesto de que la codificación fonológica es un proceso estrictamente serial, p.29-31
Laboratory phonology 7, Jan 1, 2002
Resumen: En este trabajo presentamos un experimento en el que se explora hasta qué punto el proce... more Resumen: En este trabajo presentamos un experimento en el que se explora hasta qué punto el proceso de selección léxica es sensible a la frecuencia de palabra. Se solicitó a los participantes que denominaran dibujos presentados en dos titos de listas: ...