|
Processing two languages with one brain : Electrifying insights| old_uid | 9434 |
|---|
| title | Processing two languages with one brain : Electrifying insights |
|---|
| start_date | 2010/12/14 |
|---|
| schedule | 11h-12h30 |
|---|
| online | no |
|---|
| summary | In this presentation, I introduce new perspectives on important questions such bilingual comprehension, emotional regulation of lexical-semantic access, and the time-course of lexical access in language production.
After introducing event-related potentials (ERPs) as a tool to study the time-course of mental operations, I demonstrate how late Chinese- English bilinguals unconsciously translate L2 English words into their L1 Chinese equivalents, whether L2 words are presented auditorily or visually, and I show that it is phonological –not orthographic– L1 forms that are accessed during L2 comprehension. Second, I provide evidence for top-down regulation of lexical-semantic access in late
bilinguals by affective content: Whilst implicit L1 access is observed for affectively neutral and positive words, negative words appear to shut down access to L1 representations in late bilinguals. Third, I show how millisecond-by-millisecond tracking of brain activity in relation to behavioural output enables us to establish the time of lexical access in picture naming by studying the cognate and lexical frequency effects in highly fluent Spanish-Catalan bilinguals and the Semantic Competitor
Inhibition Effect (Howard et al. 2006) in monolinguals. In conclusion, I make the case for event-related brain potentials as an invaluable method to understand the mysterious ways of the human mind. |
|---|
| responsibles | Bressé, Cohen, Kergoat |
|---|
| |
|