TY  - JOUR
A1  - Reifegerste, Jana
A1  - Elin, Kirill
A1  - Clahsen, Harald
T1  - Persistent differences between native speakers and late bilinguals
T2  - Bilingualism : language and cognition
N2  - Previous research with younger adults has revealed differences between native (L1) and non-native late-bilingual (L2) speakers with respect to how morphologically complex words are processed. This study examines whether these L1/L2 differences persist into old age. We tested masked-priming effects for derived and inflected word forms in older L1 and L2 speakers of German and compared them to results from younger L1 and L2 speakers on the same experiment (mean ages: 62 vs. 24). We found longer overall response times paired with better accuracy scores for older (L1 and L2) participants than for younger participants. The priming patterns, however, were not affected by chronological age. While both L1 and L2 speakers showed derivational priming, only the L1 speakers demonstrated inflectional priming. We argue that general performance in both L1 and L2 is affected by aging, but that the more profound differences between native and non-native processing persist into old age.
KW  - aging
KW  - late bilinguals
KW  - processing
KW  - morphology
KW  - inflection
KW  - derivation
Y1  - 2018
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/49659
SN  - 1366-7289
SN  - 1469-1841
VL  - 22
IS  - 3
SP  - 425
EP  - 440
PB  - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY  - New York
ER  -