Timeline blurring in fluent Chinese-English bilinguals

Li, Yang; Jones, Manon W.; Thierry, Guillaume

doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2018.07.008

Cited by 7 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…In a first set of four conditions, we compared present time → past time clashes with past time → past time acceptable sequences to evaluate processing abilities in our bilingual participants using a group of native English speakers as control participants (see Table 1). Li et al (2018) used a past perfect construction as the control condition (correct: After the director of the school had resigned from the university, he worked for a multinational). However, the past perfect is less frequently used in English to refer to a past event than the past simple.…”

Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Chinese Learners of English Are Conceptually Blind to Temporal Differences Conveyed by Tense

Casaponsa

Jones

et al. 2023

Language Learning

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Chinese learners of English often experience difficulty with English tense presumably because their native language is tenseless. We showed that this difficulty relates to their incomplete conceptual representations for tense rather than their poor grammatical rule knowledge. Participants made acceptability judgments on sentences describing two‐event sequences that were either temporally plausible or misaligned according to verb tense (time clash). Both upper‐intermediate Chinese learners of English and native English speakers were able to detect time clashes between events, showing that Chinese participants could apply tense rules explicitly. However, a predicted modulation of the N400 event‐related brain potential elicited by time clashes in English‐speaking participants was entirely absent in Chinese participants. In contrast, the same Chinese participants could semantically process time information when it was lexically conveyed in both languages. Thus, despite their mastery of English grammar, high‐functioning Chinese learners of English failed to process the meaning of tense‐conveyed temporal information in real time.

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Section: The Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Chinese Learners of English Are Conceptually Blind to Temporal Differences Conveyed by Tense

Casaponsa

Jones

et al. 2023

Language Learning

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“…In various word or sentence processing tasks investigating the left-to-right MTL, left-hand responses are typically faster than right-hand ones for past-tense stimuli and right-hand responses are faster than left-hand ones for future-tense stimuli, for word stimuli [e.g., 1 , 21 , 28 ], and for sentence stimuli [e.g., 29 – 31 ]. Interestingly, Li et al [ 32 ] showed that when people operate in their second language, bilinguals unconsciously retrieve irrelevant native language spatial representations that shape time conceptualization in real time. Further evidence for the implication of spatial neural system in the representation of time comes from neuropsychological data in which hemispatial neglect patients who ignore the left side of space, also have difficulties representing past events [ 33 , 34 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied time: Effect of reading expertise on the spatial representation of past and future

Ziegler¹,

Coull²,

Montant³

2022

PLoS ONE

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How do people grasp the abstract concept of time? It has been argued that abstract concepts, such as future and past, are grounded in sensorimotor experience. When responses to words that refer to the past or the future are either spatially compatible or incompatible with a left-to-right timeline, a space-time congruency effect is observed. In the present study, we investigated whether reading expertise determines the strength of the space-time congruency effect, which would suggest that learning to read and write drives the effect. Using a temporal categorization task, we compared two types of space-time congruency effects, one where spatial incongruency was generated by the location of the stimuli on the screen and one where it was generated by the location of the responses on the keyboard. While the first type of incongruency was visuo-spatial only, the second involved the motor system. Results showed stronger space-time congruency effects for the second type of incongruency (i.e., when the motor system was involved) than for the first type (visuo-spatial). Crucially, reading expertise, as measured by a standardized reading test, predicted the size of the space-time congruency effects. Altogether, these results reinforce the claim that the spatial representation of time is partially mediated by the motor system and partially grounded in spatially-directed movement, such as reading or writing.

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“…In various word or sentence processing tasks investigating the left-to-right MTL, left-hand responses are typically faster than right-hand ones for past-tense stimuli and right-hand responses are faster than left-hand ones for future-tense stimuli ( e.g., Kong & You, 2012;Santiago et al, 2007;Torralbo et al, 2006 for word stimuli, andEikmeier et al, 2015;Maienborn et al, 2015;Walker et al, 2014 for sentence stimuli). Interestingly, Li et al (2018), showed that when people operate in their second language, bilinguals unconsciously retrieve irrelevant native language spatial representations that shape time conceptualization in real time. Further evidence for the implication of spatial neural networks in the representation of time comes from neuropsychological data in which hemispatial neglect patients who ignore the left side of space, also have difficulties representing past events (Anelli et al, 2018;Saj et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied time: Effect of reading expertise on the spatial representation of past and future

Ziegler¹,

Coull²,

Montant³

2022

Preprint

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How do people grasp the abstract concept of time? It has been argued that abstract concepts, such as future and past, are grounded in sensory-motor experience. When responses to words that refer to the past or the future are either spatially compatible or incompatible with a left-to-right timeline, a space-time congruency effect is observed. In the present study, we investigated whether reading expertise would determine the strength of the space-time congruency effect, which would suggest that learning to read and write drives the effect. We compared two types of space-time congruency effects, one where spatial incongruency was generated by the location of the stimuli on the screen and one where it was generated by the location of the responses on the keyboard. While the first type of incongruency was visuo-spatial only, the second involved the motor system. Results showed stronger space-time congruency effects for the second type of incongruency (i.e., when the motor system was involved) than for the first type (visuo-spatial). Crucially, reading expertise, as measured by a standardized reading test, predicted the size of the space-time congruency effects. Altogether, these results reinforce the claim that the spatial representation of time is grounded in spatially-directed movement, such as reading or writing.

show abstract

Timeline blurring in fluent Chinese-English bilinguals

Cited by 7 publications

References 40 publications

Chinese Learners of English Are Conceptually Blind to Temporal Differences Conveyed by Tense

Chinese Learners of English Are Conceptually Blind to Temporal Differences Conveyed by Tense

Embodied time: Effect of reading expertise on the spatial representation of past and future

Embodied time: Effect of reading expertise on the spatial representation of past and future

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