The effects of redundancy on reaction time in a letter naming task
Bilingual subjects (Ss) were required to name the last letter of a sequence of five letters. These sequences were generated according to the transitional probabilities of the first-, second- and third-orders of approximation to the French and English languages. The relationship between the information value (H value) of the fifth letter and the reaction time (RT) of the naming response was studied. Inconsistent results were obtained. Only a few significant correlations were yielded between H value and RT. The same results were found for the correlations between the transitional probability values (TRP) and RT. But when RT was correlated with the frequency of appearance (FRE) of a letter, one S obtained significant correlations for all her testing sessions and another S obtained significant correlations for part of her testing sessions. The correlation coefficients between the frequency of appearance of the 5th letter (independently of the order of approximation) and RT were calculated. Two Ss obtained significant correlations for three of their testing sessions. Even though, an analysis of variance of the correlation coefficients between RT and FRE value for each session yielded a significant difference between language (p<.01) and between sessions (p< .05), no significant trends were found between sessions. T tests for repetition effects were calculated for each S. Significant values were obtained for only two Ss. The contradictory nature of the results obtained could be accounted for by the fact that no distinctions were made between compound and coordinate bilinguals. The dissimilarity between letter reading and naming might explain why the results of this study failed to replicate previous studies on letter reading.
Psycholinguistique, Bilinguisme, Aspect psychologique, Lecture
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