Towards a better understanding of receptive multilingualism: listening conditions and priming effects

Receptive multilingualism is a form of communication where speakers can comprehend an utterance of a foreign language (Lx) using their native language (L1) when L1 and Lx share similarities in, e.g., vocabulary and pronunciation. The success of receptive multilingualism can be tested by examining accuracy and reaction time of auditory word recognition (AWR) of target words in lexical decision tasks. AWR in such tasks can be affected by adverse listening conditions due to environmental noises and by the presence of a preceding prime word. This study explores whether AWR of L1 in Lx-L1 pairs (Lx = Dutch; L1 = German or English) will be affected by different degrees of similarities in their phonology and semantics and whether such an influence will differ as a function of listening condition. We observed less accurate and slower responses without semantic similarity but a null effect on accuracy without phonological overlap. The interaction with listening conditions is language-dependent.