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Xue J, Liu T, Marmolejo-Ramos F, Pei X. Age of Acquisition Effects on Word Processing for Chinese Native Learners' English: ERP Evidence for the Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis. Front Psychol 2017; 8:818. [PMID: 28572785 PMCID: PMC5435808 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00818] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/08/2016] [Accepted: 05/04/2017] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
The present study aimed at distinguishing processing of early learned L2 words from late ones for Chinese natives who learn English as a foreign language. Specifically, we examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA) effect arose during the arbitrary mapping from conceptual knowledge onto linguistic units. The behavior and ERP data were collected when 28 Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to perform semantic relatedness judgment on word pairs, which represented three stages of word learning (i.e., primary school, junior and senior high schools). A 3 (AoA: early vs. intermediate vs. late) × 2 (regularity: regular vs. irregular) × 2 (semantic relatedness: related vs. unrelated) × 2 (hemisphere: left vs. right) × 3 (brain area: anterior vs. central vs. posterior) within-subjects design was adopted. Results from the analysis of N100 and N400 amplitudes showed that early learned words had an advantage in processing accuracy and speed; there is a tendency that the AoA effect was more pronounced for irregular word pairs and in the semantic related condition. More important, ERP results showed early acquired words induced larger N100 amplitudes for early AoA words in the parietal area and more negative-going N400 than late acquire words in the frontal and central regions. The results indicate the locus of the AoA effect might derive from the arbitrary mapping between word forms and semantic concepts, and early acquired words have more semantic interconnections than late acquired words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jin Xue
- School of Foreign Studies, University of Science and Technology BeijingBeijing, China
| | - Tongtong Liu
- School of English Language, Literature and Culture, Beijing International Studies UniversityBeijing, China
| | - Fernando Marmolejo-Ramos
- Department of Psychology, Stockholm UniversityStockholm, Sweden
- Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Adelaide, AdelaideSA, Australia
| | - Xuna Pei
- School of English Language, Literature and Culture, Beijing International Studies UniversityBeijing, China
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Hartanto A, Suárez L. Conceptual Representation Changes in Indonesian-English Bilinguals. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RESEARCH 2016; 45:1201-1217. [PMID: 26442673 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-015-9399-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/05/2023]
Abstract
This study investigated conceptual representations changes in bilinguals. Participants were Indonesian-English bilinguals (dominant in Indonesian, with different levels of English proficiency) and a control group composed of English-dominant bilinguals. All completed a gender decision task, in which participants decided whether English words referred to a male or female person or animal. In order to explore conceptual representations, we divided the words into gender-specific and gender-ambiguous words. Gender-specific words were words in which conceptual representations contained gender as a defining feature, in both English and Indonesian (e.g., uncle). In contrast, gender-ambiguous words were words in which gender was a defining feature in English but not a necessary feature in Indonesian (e.g., nephew and niece are both subsumed under the same word, keponakan, in Indonesian). The experiment was conducted exclusively in English. Indonesian-English bilinguals responded faster to gender-specific words than gender-ambiguous words, but the difference was smaller for the most proficient bilinguals. As expected, English-dominant speakers' response latencies were similar across these two types of words. The results suggest that English concepts are dynamic and that proficiency leads to native-like conceptual representations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andree Hartanto
- School of Arts & Social Sciences, James Cook University, 149 Sims Drive, Singapore, 387380, Singapore.
- School of Social Sciences, Singapore Management University, 90 Stamford Road, Level 4, Singapore, 178903, Singapore.
| | - Lidia Suárez
- School of Arts & Social Sciences, James Cook University, 149 Sims Drive, Singapore, 387380, Singapore
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Palomar-García MÁ, Bueichekú E, Ávila C, Sanjuán A, Strijkers K, Ventura-Campos N, Costa A. Do bilinguals show neural differences with monolinguals when processing their native language? BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2015; 142:36-44. [PMID: 25658632 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2015.01.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2014] [Revised: 12/19/2014] [Accepted: 01/02/2015] [Indexed: 06/04/2023]
Abstract
The present research used fMRI to measure brain activity in passive listening and picture-naming tasks with a group of early high proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals, in which Spanish was dominant, and a group of Spanish monolinguals. Both tasks were conducted in Spanish and the effect of cognateness was studied. The behavioural results showed slow naming responses in bilinguals. The fMRI results revealed that bilinguals and monolinguals differed only during the picture naming task. Unlike previous results, obtained mainly with L2, monolinguals displayed more activity in receptive language areas and less activity in the posterior cingulate cortex and right STG in the picture-naming task than bilinguals. As far as we know, this is the first study to investigate the neural basis of L1 processing in bilinguals and monolinguals by performing the task in the same language and in a monolingual context. The results indicate more efficient use of language networks in monolinguals because bilinguals utilised a more distributed network, which may imply subtle processing disadvantages.
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Affiliation(s)
- María-Ángeles Palomar-García
- Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Clínica i Psicobiologia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana, Spain
| | - Elisenda Bueichekú
- Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Clínica i Psicobiologia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana, Spain
| | - César Ávila
- Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Clínica i Psicobiologia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana, Spain.
| | - Ana Sanjuán
- Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Clínica i Psicobiologia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana, Spain; Language Group, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College of London, United Kingdom
| | - Kristof Strijkers
- Center of Brain and Cognition, CBC, Universitat Pompeu i Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Noelia Ventura-Campos
- Departament de Psicologia Bàsica, Clínica i Psicobiologia, Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales, Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana, Spain
| | - Albert Costa
- Center of Brain and Cognition, CBC, Universitat Pompeu i Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, ICREA, Barcelona, Spain
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García AM, Ibáñez A, Huepe D, Houck AL, Michon M, Lezama CG, Chadha S, Rivera-Rei A. Word reading and translation in bilinguals: the impact of formal and informal translation expertise. Front Psychol 2014; 5:1302. [PMID: 25429279 PMCID: PMC4228976 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01302] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/06/2014] [Accepted: 10/27/2014] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Studies on bilingual word reading and translation have examined the effects of lexical variables (e.g., concreteness, cognate status) by comparing groups of non-translators with varying levels of L2 proficiency. However, little attention has been paid to another relevant factor: translation expertise (TI). To explore this issue, we administered word reading and translation tasks to two groups of non-translators possessing different levels of informal TI (Experiment 1), and to three groups of bilinguals possessing different levels of translation training (Experiment 2). Reaction-time recordings showed that in all groups reading was faster than translation and unaffected by concreteness and cognate effects. Conversely, in both experiments, all groups translated concrete and cognate words faster than abstract and non-cognate words, respectively. Notably, an advantage of backward over forward translation was observed only for low-proficiency non-translators (in Experiment 1). Also, in Experiment 2, the modifications induced by translation expertise were more marked in the early than in the late stages of training and practice. The results suggest that TI contributes to modulating inter-equivalent connections in bilingual memory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Adolfo M García
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council Buenos Aires, Argentina ; School of Languages, National University of Córdoba Córdoba, Argentina ; Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Favaloro University Buenos Aires, Argentina ; Laboratory of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Foundation Core on Neuroscience, Diego Portales University Santiago, Chile
| | - Agustín Ibáñez
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council Buenos Aires, Argentina ; School of Languages, National University of Córdoba Córdoba, Argentina ; Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Favaloro University Buenos Aires, Argentina ; Laboratory of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Foundation Core on Neuroscience, Diego Portales University Santiago, Chile ; Universidad Autónoma del Caribe Barranquilla, Colombia ; Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Australian Research Council Sydney, NSW, Australia
| | - David Huepe
- Laboratory of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Foundation Core on Neuroscience, Diego Portales University Santiago, Chile
| | | | - Maëva Michon
- Laboratory of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Foundation Core on Neuroscience, Diego Portales University Santiago, Chile
| | - Carlos G Lezama
- National Scientific and Technical Research Council Buenos Aires, Argentina ; Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Favaloro University Buenos Aires, Argentina
| | - Sumeer Chadha
- Laboratory of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Foundation Core on Neuroscience, Diego Portales University Santiago, Chile
| | - Alvaro Rivera-Rei
- Laboratory of Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neurology, Foundation Core on Neuroscience, Diego Portales University Santiago, Chile
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