Hearing and reading two languages at the same time

Two experiments measured simultaneous processing of auditory and visual language in English and Spanish. Participants heard and read two words simultaneously and were cued to report what they heard or what they read in an unpredictable sequence. Auditory and visual stimuli were (1) semantically congruent and in the same language; (2) semantically congruent and in different languages; (3) semantically incongruent and in the same language; or (4) semantically incongruent and in different languages. Experiment 1 was conducted with English-Spanish bilinguals and Experiment 2 with English and Spanish monolinguals. The two groups showed similar results. In the semantically incongruent conditions and congruent between-language conditions, interference patterns similar to those observed in bilingual Stroop and Stroop-like experiments were found. In the semantically congruent within-language conditions, facilitation was found. Differences in cue modality for both groups showed in general less interference for the auditory cue modality