Psycholinguistic Approaches to Language Processing in Heritage Speakers.

This paper focuses on the dearth of language-processing research addressing Spanish heritage speakers in assimilationist communities. First, we review key offline work on this population, and we then summarize the few psycholinguistic (online) studies that have already been carried out. In an attempt to encourage more such research, in the next section, we review the various techniques that psycholinguists commonly use in studies of language processing. We restrict our review to approaches that should be within the reach of most researchers. In our final section, we provide points of departure for further psycholinguistic investigations into this population. We do this in the hope that, one day, we may be able to determine with some degree of certainty the challenges that this population of Spanish speakers faces when processing their first language online, in real time. Introduction Since the end of the 19th century, psycholinguistics has contributed to our understanding of first language (L1) storage and processing, and, in the last thirty years, it has illuminated the study of bilingualism (see Garnham, Garrod, & Sanford, 2006 for a review of the history of psycholinguistics). The psycholinguistic literature on bilingualism is also quite comprehensive at this point, and it has greatly contributed to our knowledge on the matter (see Field, 2008; Kroll & Sunderman, 2003; and Schwartz & Kroll, 2006 for reviews of the existing literature). However, there is one population of bilinguals that very few researchers in psycholinguistics have addressed, namely, Spanish heritage speakers in assimilationist English communities. 1 This population essentially encompasses most Spanish-heritage speakers in the United States. 2 Unlike other early bilingual populations such as Catalan-Spanish speakers, for instance, these heritage speakers often do not reach the same level of linguistic ability in their two languages. 3 As a group they may also exhibit varying levels of proficiency in all or several skill areas (i.e., speaking, reading, writing, and listening). Usually, such heritage speakers are secondor thirdgeneration immigrants who grow up in monolingual Spanish or bilingual Spanish-English households (in which one or both parents speak Spanish). In these situations, they are exposed to Spanish or both English and Spanish since birth or before the age of 5, but receive most of or all their schooling in English. That is, the experiences of these speakers are different from those of their monolingual, late-, and balanced-bilingual peers on various levels, including sociolinguistic variables such as L1/minority status, the use of Spanish in the family, the age onset of L2 acquisition (or onset of bilingualism), L1 input availability, and L1 literacy. This unique situation often impedes them from attaining native-level abilities in their L1. As stated by Montrul in much of her work on heritage speakers (e.g., Montrul, 2002, 2004b, 2006a, 2006b, 2008; Montrul & Bowles, 2009; Montrul, Foote, & Perpiñán, 2008), they share linguistic 2 Heritage Language Journal, 8(1) Spring, 2011 characteristics with not only their L1 monolingual counterparts because of their early onset of L1, but also with L2 learners because of their varying degrees of proficiency in Spanish