Electrophysiological evidence for language interference in late bilinguals

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

• The process of word meaning retrieval in late bilinguals is debated, with theories suggesting conceptual mediation or word association.
• Understanding how bilinguals access their second language (L2) is crucial for cognitive science and education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether late Chinese-English bilinguals unconsciously translate English words into Chinese during semantic processing.
• To determine if form repetition, masked by translation, influences L2 word recognition.

Main Methods:

• Event-related potential (ERP) recordings were used to measure brain activity in late Chinese-English bilinguals.
• Participants performed a semantic relatedness judgment task on English word pairs, some containing hidden Chinese character repetitions upon translation.
• Behavioral data (reaction times, error rates) and electrophysiological data (N400 amplitude) were analyzed.

Main Results:

• Native English speakers showed no effect of the hidden translation repetition.
• Chinese-English bilinguals exhibited longer reaction times, increased errors, and larger N400 ERP amplitudes for unrelated English word pairs that concealed form repetition in Chinese.
• These effects occurred even when participants were unaware of the hidden repetition.

Conclusions:

• Late bilinguals unconsciously translate L2 words into their native language, even when the translation is not semantically relevant.
• This unconscious translation process influences L2 semantic processing and word recognition.
• The findings support a translation-based account of L2 meaning access in late bilinguals.