Brain potentials reveal unconscious translation during foreign-language comprehension

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Bilingualism Research

Background:

• The role of the native language during second language (L2) comprehension is debated.
• Previous studies often created artificial dual-language contexts, limiting ecological validity.
• Implicit native language activation during L2 processing remains poorly understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the native language is implicitly activated during L2 comprehension.
• To examine L2 processing in a context minimizing explicit bilingual interference.
• To explore the automaticity and unconscious nature of native language activation.

Main Methods:

• Utilized event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to measure neural responses.
• Employed a semantic relatedness judgment task with Chinese-English bilinguals reading English words.
• Included a control group of Chinese monolinguals and auditory stimuli to confirm findings.

Main Results:

• Bilinguals showed significant neural modulation indicative of unconscious translation to their native language (Chinese).
• This effect occurred even when participants were unaware of the hidden native language feature (character repetition).
• Similar neural patterns were observed in monolinguals and in an auditory comprehension task.

Conclusions:

• Native language activation is an automatic and unconscious correlate of second-language comprehension.
• This finding challenges the notion that L2 processing can be fully independent of the native language.
• Provides neural evidence for the pervasive influence of the native language in bilinguals.