ERP Response Unveils Effect of Second Language Manipulation on First Language Processing

Overview

Journal PLoS One

Specialties General Medicine
Science

Date 2016 Nov 29

PMID 27893807

Citations 7

Authors

Elvira Khachatryan

Flavio Camarrone

Wim Fias

Marc M Van Hulle

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Lexical access in bilinguals has been considered either selective or non-selective and evidence exists in favor of both hypotheses. We conducted a linguistic experiment to assess whether a bilingual's language mode influences the processing of first language information. We recorded event related potentials during a semantic priming paradigm with a covert manipulation of the second language (L2) using two types of stimulus presentations (short and long). We observed a significant facilitation of word pairs related in L2 in the short version reflected by a decrease in N400 amplitude in response to target words related to the English meaning of an inter-lingual homograph (homograph-unrelated group). This was absent in the long version, as the N400 amplitude for this group was similar to the one for the control-unrelated group. We also interviewed the participants whether they were aware of the importance of L2 in the experiment. We conclude that subjects participating in the long and short versions were in different language modes: closer to monolingual mode for the long and closer to bilingual mode for the short version; and that awareness about covert manipulation of L2 can influence the language mode, which in its turn influences the processing of the first language.

Citing Articles

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