Browsing by Author "Dick, Taryn Lee"

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    Thinking in two minds : the role of second language in risk-taking
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) Dick, Taryn Lee; Bylund, Emanuel; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study assessed the effects that language may have on an individual’s decision making in scenarios that involve some type of risk. The main research questions of the study are “Do individuals with prolonged exposure to, and use of, the second language (in this case first language Afrikaans – second languages English bilinguals) exhibit the same framing effect biases documented in previous research?” and “May language background variables, and second language visualisation ability, account for the variation in the decisions made by this group?”. The study consisted of 159 bilingual speakers (first language Afrikaans, second language English), who were randomly assigned to one of two different framing versions of the scenario, (known as the loss or gain frame), and these frames could have either been presented in Afrikaans or English. These conditions were compared and analysed for how the languages effected the choices made in the task. Participants were also presented with a classification task, in which they were assigned to match the language that was represented in the main task. The results of this study provide a new perspective to research in this field, in that the findings were not the same as those in previous research. Participants in the second language condition should have been less effected by framing in the loss version of the task, but instead results in this condition reflect an effect of framing. Participants in the first language condition, however, replicate the results found in previous research. The results of the visualisation task also present findings different to those in previous research, in that speakers in the second language condition outperform those in the first language condition.