Do Spanish–English bilinguals have their fingers in two pies – or is it their toes? An electrophysiological investigation of semantic access in bilinguals

Abstract

We examined the time course of cross-language activation during word recognition in the context of semantic priming with interlingual homographs. Spanish–English bilinguals were presented pairs of English words visually one word at a time and judged whether the two words were related in meaning while recording event-related potentials. Interlingual homographs (e.g., “pie”: “Pie” in Spanish is a foot.) appeared in the target position and were preceded by primes that were either related to the English meaning (e.g., “apple”), related to the Spanish meaning of interlingual homographs (e.g., “toe”) or totally unrelated (e.g., “floor”/“bed”). Spanish–English bilinguals showed semantic priming not only when interlingual homographs were related to the English meaning but also to the Spanish meaning of the prime. These priming effects were detectable in the mean amplitude of the N400 (350–500 ms) even when the target word was related to the prime in Spanish and the context of the experiment was English. However, the relatedness effect was found in the window of a late positive component (LPC; 550–700 ms) only for stimulus pairs related in English. To verify that the observed pattern of the results was due to participants’ bilingualism, we also tested a group of English monolinguals. The monolinguals showed a semantic priming effect for the N400 and LPC time windows only when interlingual homographs were related to the English meaning. These results suggest that both languages are activated in the classical time frame of semantic activation indexed by N400 modulations, but that semantic activation in the non-target language failed to be explicitly processed.

Tracking lexical consolidation with ERPs: Lexical and semantic-priming effects on N400 and LPC responses to newly-learned words

“…For example, the subject may be able to make a deliberate prediction of what the target word could be or at least of what it might mean, based on the meaning of the prime. This account would explain why priming effects emerged mainly in the LPC window, which has been implicated in explicit semantic retrieval (Hoshino and Thierry, 2012;Juottonen et al, 1996;Martin et al, 2009;Rohaut et al, 2015). A controlled priming process could take place regardless of which memory systemepisodic or lexical -currently binds the relevant memory traces.…”

“…The LPC, in contrast to the N400, has been claimed to reflect controlled, non-automatic processes of semantic retrieval (Hoshino and Thierry, 2012;Juottonen et al, 1996;Martin et al, 2009;Rohaut et al, 2015). Hoshino and Thierry (2012) and Martin et al (2009) found that word meanings in the non-attended language of bilinguals modulated N400 but not LPC responses, whilst the attended language elicited priming effects in both windows.…”

“…Hoshino and Thierry (2012) and Martin et al (2009) found that word meanings in the non-attended language of bilinguals modulated N400 but not LPC responses, whilst the attended language elicited priming effects in both windows. They conclude that the LPC reflects conscious semantic access and evaluation, which does not occur in the non-attended language.…”

“…While the N400 is at least in part driven by automatic processes (Kutas and Federmeier, 2011), the LPC has been linked to more controlled, explicit semantic access (Hoshino and Thierry, 2012;Juottonen et al, 1996;Martin et al, 2009;Rohaut et al, 2015) and episodic memory retrieval (Rugg and Curran, 2007). Given that automatic access to fully lexicalised representations is presumably not necessary for strategic, overt priming effects to emerge, we may expect to see semantic-priming LPC effects for both consolidated and unconsolidated novel words.…”

How do bilinguals identify the language of the words they read?

“…It is well-established that when bilinguals process words, they unconsciously access both of their languages, even when set in a single language context (Dijkstra et al, 2000;Dimitropoulou et al, 2011aDimitropoulou et al, , 2011bDuyck et al, 2007;Duyck and Warlop, 2009;Grossi et al, 2012;Hoshino and Thierry, 2012;Ng and Wicha, 2013;Midgley et al, 2008;Perea et al, 2008;Spalek et al, 2014;Schwartz et al, 2007;Thierry an Wu, 2004;Thierry and Wu, 2007;Van Heuven et al, 1998Zhang et al, 2011). However, bilinguals need to know in which language they are reading to correctly retrieve the meaning of words.…”