Effects of Perceived Accent on Code-Switching Processing

Code-switching (CS) is often characterized as cognitively demanding. However, CS is constrained by social experience. Bilinguals exploit (extra-)linguistic cues, such as the perceived language knowledge of a peer, to dynamically adapt their expectation of CS, thereby attenuating CS processing costs. In the present study, we test whether Spanish-English bilinguals adapt their expectations for upcoming switched structures based on perceived speaker accent.

We tested early Spanish-English bilinguals (n = 74) using a visual world paradigm eye-tracking task. Participants viewed two images that matched or mismatch in grammatical gender while listening to sentences containing a switch between either a masculine or feminine Spanish determiner and an English noun, a structure with a greater preference for masculine determiners in CS production. The sentences were produced by speakers of Caribbean, Peninsular, or L2 Spanish (between-participant manipulation). Based on participants’ bilingual experience, predictions about the (dis)engagement of different processing strategies can be derived.

(Preliminary results presented at the UF Spring Undergraduate Research Symposium. Full results presented at HSP2026. Look out for a forthcoming paper on this work in a special issue of Isogloss!)