Victor S Ferreira
Biographic Data
| ID | 3602312 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Victor S Ferreira |
| GIVEN NAMES | Victor S |
| FAMILY NAME | Ferreira |
| SIGNATURE | FERREIRA V S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California San Diego |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5694-974X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Language switches can be monitored but not fully controlled
When reading aloud mixed-language paragraphs, bilinguals occasionally produce language intrusions , that is, they translate written switch words to avoid producing them overtly. Intrusions provide evidence about the nature of language control , which refers to how bilinguals maintain control over which language they speak. The present study compared eye movements for successful versus unsuccessful switches during reading aloud of mixed-language p…
Do people structure words and sentences using shared mechanisms
Speakers encode silent structures
Do speakers encode abstract structural representations devoid of perceptual-motor content, that is, phonology? In six recall-based production experiments, we examined whether English speakers encode the null complementizer in sentence production using structural priming , the tendency for speakers to reuse the structure they have recently encountered. The results show that the null complementizer can be primed across distinct construction types a…
Lexical tone is different and special
Structural representation in the native language after extended second-language immersion
Knowing the sentence structures (i.e., information that guides the assembly of words into sentences) is crucial in language knowledge. This knowledge must be stable for successful communication, but when learning another language that uses different structures, speakers must adjust their structural knowledge. Here, we examine how newly acquired second language (L2) knowledge influences first language (L1) structure knowledge. We compared two grou…
Different language control mechanisms in comprehension and production
The temporal dynamics of bilingual language control
The Role of Prosody in Disambiguating English Indirect Requests
Ambiguity pervades language. The sentence “My office is really hot” could be interpreted as a complaint about the temperature or as an indirect request to turn on the air conditioning. How do comprehenders determine a speaker’s intended interpretation? One possibility is that speakers and comprehenders exploit prosody to overcome the pragmatic ambiguity inherent in indirect requests. In a pre-registered behavioral experiment, we find that human l…
Language control after phrasal planning
Still no evidence for audience design in syntax
Language of instruction affects language interference in the third language
Applied linguistic work claims that multilinguals’ non-native languages interfere with one another based on similarities in cognitive factors like proficiency or age of acquisition. Two experiments explored how trilinguals regulate control of native- and non-native-language words. Experiment 1 tested 46 Dutch–English–French trilinguals in a monitoring task. Participants decided if phonemes were present in the target language name of a picture, ph…
Selective activation of language specific structural representations
Beyond linear order
Learning structural alternations
Some word-order alternations observed across the world's languages are constrained by specific verb choice, whereas one type of word-order alternation (i.e., scrambling) frequently seen in free word order languages is not lexically-dependent on the verb. Three novel-language learning experiments explore whether speakers latently respect this generalization. If learners show conservativeness that closely reflects statistics from the input, then it…
Structural alignment in dialogue and monologue (and what attention may have to do with it)
Shared syntax between comprehension and production
When a seven is not a seven
Self-ratings of language proficiency are ubiquitous in research on bilingualism, but little is known about their validity, especially when the same scale is used across different types of bilinguals. Self-ratings and picture naming data from 1044 Spanish–English and 519 Chinese–English bilinguals were analyzed in five between- and within-population comparisons. Chinese–English bilinguals scored more extremely than Spanish–English bilinguals, and …
Keith Rayner (1943–2015)
Keith Rayner, holder of the Atkinson Chair in Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, passed away on January 21, 2015, from complications due to cancer. Keith was born on June 20, 1943, in Dover, England. Keith was the major figure in the study of cognitive processes in reading, defining its approaches, techniques, and questions over four decades. Keith's main line of research involved the use of eye-movement measurement to probe t…
The Oxford Handbook of Language Production
The Influence of Topic Status on Written and Spoken Sentence Production
Four experiments investigate the influence of topic status and givenness on how speakers and writers structure sentences. The results of these experiments show that when a referent is previously given, it is more likely to be produced early in both sentences and word lists, confirming prior work showing that givenness increases the accessibility of given referents. When a referent is previously given and assigned topic status, it is even more lik…
What causes the bilingual disadvantage in verbal fluency? The dual-task analogy
We investigated the consequences of bilingualism for verbal fluency by comparing bilinguals to monolinguals, and dominant versus non-dominant-language fluency. In Experiment 1, bilinguals produced fewer correct responses, slower first response times and proportionally delayed retrieval, relative to monolinguals. In Experiment 2, similar results were obtained comparing the dominant to the non-dominant languages within bilinguals. Additionally, bil…
Structural priming
Repetition is a central phenomenon of behavior, and researchers have made extensive use of it to illuminate psychological functioning. In the language sciences, a ubiquitous form of such repetition is structural priming, a tendency to repeat or better process a current sentence because of its structural similarity to a previously experienced ("prime") sentence (J. K. Bock, 1986). The recent explosion of research in structural priming has made it …
The functions of structural priming
Structural priming refers to speakers' tendency to produce sentences with previously heard or produced syntactic structures. We review arguments and evidence for three common accounts of the functions of structural priming. One is that structural priming enhances fluency. Only some (reaction time and fluency measure) evidence supports this view. A second account argues that structural priming stems from implicit learning of how features of meanin…
Given-New Ordering Effects on the Production of Scrambled Sentences in Japanese
Effect of Ambiguity and Lexical Availability on Syntactic and Lexical Production
Given-New Ordering Effects on the Production of Scrambled Sentences in Japanese
The Influence of Topic Status on Written and Spoken Sentence Production
Four experiments investigate the influence of topic status and givenness on how speakers and writers structure sentences. The results of these experiments show that when a referent is previously given, it is more likely to be produced early in both sentences and word lists, confirming prior work showing that givenness increases the accessibility of given referents. When a referent is previously given and assigned topic status, it is even more lik…
Effect of Ambiguity and Lexical Availability on Syntactic and Lexical Production
Given-New Ordering Effects on the Production of Scrambled Sentences in Japanese
The functions of structural priming
Structural priming refers to speakers' tendency to produce sentences with previously heard or produced syntactic structures. We review arguments and evidence for three common accounts of the functions of structural priming. One is that structural priming enhances fluency. Only some (reaction time and fluency measure) evidence supports this view. A second account argues that structural priming stems from implicit learning of how features of meanin…
Structural priming
Repetition is a central phenomenon of behavior, and researchers have made extensive use of it to illuminate psychological functioning. In the language sciences, a ubiquitous form of such repetition is structural priming, a tendency to repeat or better process a current sentence because of its structural similarity to a previously experienced ("prime") sentence (J. K. Bock, 1986). The recent explosion of research in structural priming has made it …
What causes the bilingual disadvantage in verbal fluency? The dual-task analogy
We investigated the consequences of bilingualism for verbal fluency by comparing bilinguals to monolinguals, and dominant versus non-dominant-language fluency. In Experiment 1, bilinguals produced fewer correct responses, slower first response times and proportionally delayed retrieval, relative to monolinguals. In Experiment 2, similar results were obtained comparing the dominant to the non-dominant languages within bilinguals. Additionally, bil…
The Influence of Topic Status on Written and Spoken Sentence Production
Four experiments investigate the influence of topic status and givenness on how speakers and writers structure sentences. The results of these experiments show that when a referent is previously given, it is more likely to be produced early in both sentences and word lists, confirming prior work showing that givenness increases the accessibility of given referents. When a referent is previously given and assigned topic status, it is even more lik…
The Oxford Handbook of Language Production
Keith Rayner (1943–2015)
Keith Rayner, holder of the Atkinson Chair in Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, passed away on January 21, 2015, from complications due to cancer. Keith was born on June 20, 1943, in Dover, England. Keith was the major figure in the study of cognitive processes in reading, defining its approaches, techniques, and questions over four decades. Keith's main line of research involved the use of eye-movement measurement to probe t…
When a seven is not a seven
Self-ratings of language proficiency are ubiquitous in research on bilingualism, but little is known about their validity, especially when the same scale is used across different types of bilinguals. Self-ratings and picture naming data from 1044 Spanish–English and 519 Chinese–English bilinguals were analyzed in five between- and within-population comparisons. Chinese–English bilinguals scored more extremely than Spanish–English bilinguals, and …
Structural alignment in dialogue and monologue (and what attention may have to do with it)
Shared syntax between comprehension and production
Language of instruction affects language interference in the third language
Applied linguistic work claims that multilinguals’ non-native languages interfere with one another based on similarities in cognitive factors like proficiency or age of acquisition. Two experiments explored how trilinguals regulate control of native- and non-native-language words. Experiment 1 tested 46 Dutch–English–French trilinguals in a monitoring task. Participants decided if phonemes were present in the target language name of a picture, ph…
Selective activation of language specific structural representations
Beyond linear order
Learning structural alternations
Some word-order alternations observed across the world's languages are constrained by specific verb choice, whereas one type of word-order alternation (i.e., scrambling) frequently seen in free word order languages is not lexically-dependent on the verb. Three novel-language learning experiments explore whether speakers latently respect this generalization. If learners show conservativeness that closely reflects statistics from the input, then it…
Language control after phrasal planning
Still no evidence for audience design in syntax
The temporal dynamics of bilingual language control
The Role of Prosody in Disambiguating English Indirect Requests
Ambiguity pervades language. The sentence “My office is really hot” could be interpreted as a complaint about the temperature or as an indirect request to turn on the air conditioning. How do comprehenders determine a speaker’s intended interpretation? One possibility is that speakers and comprehenders exploit prosody to overcome the pragmatic ambiguity inherent in indirect requests. In a pre-registered behavioral experiment, we find that human l…
Structural representation in the native language after extended second-language immersion
Knowing the sentence structures (i.e., information that guides the assembly of words into sentences) is crucial in language knowledge. This knowledge must be stable for successful communication, but when learning another language that uses different structures, speakers must adjust their structural knowledge. Here, we examine how newly acquired second language (L2) knowledge influences first language (L1) structure knowledge. We compared two grou…
Different language control mechanisms in comprehension and production
Speakers encode silent structures
Do speakers encode abstract structural representations devoid of perceptual-motor content, that is, phonology? In six recall-based production experiments, we examined whether English speakers encode the null complementizer in sentence production using structural priming , the tendency for speakers to reuse the structure they have recently encountered. The results show that the null complementizer can be primed across distinct construction types a…
Lexical tone is different and special
Language switches can be monitored but not fully controlled
When reading aloud mixed-language paragraphs, bilinguals occasionally produce language intrusions , that is, they translate written switch words to avoid producing them overtly. Intrusions provide evidence about the nature of language control , which refers to how bilinguals maintain control over which language they speak. The present study compared eye movements for successful versus unsuccessful switches during reading aloud of mixed-language p…
Do people structure words and sentences using shared mechanisms
Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism (21 works) · Psychology (21 works) · Linguistics (20 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Cognitive psychology (13 works) · Language Development and Disorders (11 works) · Cognition (10 works) · Language production (7 works) · Sentence (7 works)