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Modality-dependent orthographic reliance in highly proficient Russian-English bilinguals

Poster Session B, Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.

Danielle Fahey¹, Angelina Rubina², Ekatarina Ausheva², Mila Tasseva-Kurktchieva²; ¹University of Alabama, ²University of South Carolina

Introduction. Cross-linguistic lexical processing in bilinguals is shaped by orthographic and phonological similarity across languages, particularly for cognates and lexical borrowings (Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002; Jared & Kroll, 2001). Previous work has demonstrated that orthographic and phonological overlap can facilitate bilingual lexical access, although these effects vary as a function of language proficiency, modality, and lexical experience (Degani et al., 2018; Marian & Spivey, 2003). Russian-English bilingualism provides an especially useful context for examining these effects because lexical borrowing and cognate relationships often involve mismatches between orthographic and phonological similarity. The present study examined how orthographic Levenshtein distance (NLD-O), phonological Levenshtein distance (NLD-P), lexical frequency, and bilingual experience jointly influence similarity judgments and response times during Russian-English lexical processing. Methods. Twenty-nine highly proficient Russian-English bilingual adults completed a lexical similarity norming task involving Russian-English 120 word pairs varying in orthographic and phonological Levenshtein distances (NLD-O and NLD-P), lexical frequency, input modality (print/auditory), and word class (nouns/verbs). Participants provided Likert similarity judgments and response times (RTs). Linear mixed-effects models were conducted separately for similarity ratings and RTs with random intercepts for subjects and items. Bilingual experience variables initially demonstrated substantial multicollinearity; therefore, variance inflation factor analyses were used to reduce redundant predictors prior to final modeling. Final models included orthographic and phonological Levenshtein distance, lexical frequency, input type, word class, Russian and English proficiency, length of residence in the United States, native language background, Russian family exposure, English family exposure, English use outside the home, and length of English exposure. The final models included theoretically motivated two-way interactions among Levenshtein distance measures, modality, word class, and proficiency variables. Results. For similarity ratings, significant main effects emerged for word class (p = .002), phonological Levenshtein distance (p < .001), English lexical frequency (p = .015), and length of residence in the United States (p = .014). Verbs received lower similarity ratings than nouns. Greater phonological Levenshtein distance predicted higher similarity ratings. Significant interactions were observed for input type × NLD-O (p < .001), NLD-O × NLD-P (p = .010), NLD-P × Russian proficiency (p = .011), and NLD-P × English proficiency (p < .001). Orthographic Levenshtein distance alone was not significant, but its interaction with input type indicated modality-dependent orthographic effects. In contrast, RT analyses revealed no statistically reliable main effects or interactions after accounting for subject- and item-level variance, although the interaction between word class and NLD-P approached significance (p = .064). Conclusions. The findings suggest that phonological neighborhood structure plays a stronger role than orthographic neighborhood structure in Russian-English bilingual similarity judgments. However, orthographic effects emerged under specific modality conditions and in interaction with phonological Levenshtein distance, consistent with interactive models of bilingual lexical access (Dijkstra & van Heuven, 2002). The modulation of Levenshtein distance effects by bilingual proficiency further suggests that cross-language lexical organization is dynamically shaped by bilingual experience and exposure. These findings contribute to current neurocognitive models of bilingual lexical processing by demonstrating distinct and interacting roles for orthographic and phonological similarity during cross-language lexical evaluation.

Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Reading