Language context effects on English voice onset time during Stroop interference in sequential English–Spanish bilinguals

Abstract

Voice onset time (VOT) distinguishes English and Spanish voiceless stop consonants, with Spanish voiceless stop consonants typically exhibiting substantially shorter VOT than those in English. This study examined whether language context during a cognitive interference task modulates bilingual speakers’ voiceless stop consonant production as measured by VOT. In the classic color-word Stroop task, participants are instructed to name the ink color while inhibiting the tendency to read the printed word (for example, the word BLUE printed in red ink requires the response “red.”) In this investigation, eleven sequential English–Spanish bilingual speakers completed two computerized Stroop tasks. In one Stroop task, color words were presented in English and participants responded in English. In a second Stroop task, color words were presented in Spanish, though participants still responded in English. The response “purple” occurred eight times in each condition. Voice onset time for /p/ in purple was measured for each participant and averaged within condition. It was hypothesized that Spanish-language stimulus presentation would yield shorter VOT in English speakers’ productions of “purple,” reflecting increased activation of Spanish phonetic patterns despite an English output requirement. Findings inform models of bilingual speech production, language co-activation, and phonetic implementation under attentional load.