Later language learning: The listening dimension

Separate areas of research on the recognition of spoken language have produced findings which in combination may cast doubt on cognitive benefits from late learning of a new language. On the one hand, second-language (L2) listening has been shown to involve extra lexical activation and inter-word competition (e.g., Japanese listeners activate “leg” when hearing “reggae”); this is over and above the competition experienced by native (L1) listeners (e.g., “leg” in “legacy”) and is also problematic in that it is harder to deactivate. On the other hand, older listeners as a group have larger L1 vocabularies than younger listeners but have been claimed to have less capacity to inhibit competing words in speech. However, the results suggesting low inhibition ability in fact mostly come from decision tasks; they may arise in decision processes rather than perception. With eye-tracking (ET), decision processes can be factored out. ET studies have indeed pointed to more fine-grained effects, such as differences in sensitivity to lexical frequency, potentially reflecting vocabulary size asymmetries. In a series of ET studies of competitor activation in both younger and older adults, we have observed (a) in many situations similar competitor patterns in older and younger listeners, but (b) in other cases patterns that differed but showed LESS competition for older than for younger listeners. In the latter case, there was also evidence that patterns of competition are in part subject to listener control; bilingual listeners showed no competition from less-likely competitors (such as rhyming words), whether they were listening to L1 or L2. Overall this pattern suggests that it is unlikely that learning a new language at an older age will induce exacerbated competition in combination with poorer inhibition skills. Indeed, bilingualism may encourage more targeted management of the competition process in listening.