Psychology (Functional Area: Developmental & Cognitive Processes)
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Browsing Psychology (Functional Area: Developmental & Cognitive Processes) by Subject "ERPs"
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Item Open Access The Influence of Cultural Context on Language Activation in Korean-English Bilinguals(2014-07-09) Berkes, Matthias Daniel; Bialystok, Ellen B.Both languages for bilinguals are jointly activated even when performance is clearly restricted to one. The present study investigated the role of cultural cues on the relative level of joint linguistic activation. Twenty-two Korean-English bilinguals were presented with a picture and an audio cue and indicated via button press whether the heard label named the depicted object while EEG was recorded. In the critical blocks, the pictures represented exemplars that were more typically English or Korean, even though both exemplars take the same name in both languages (e.g., North American soup vs. Korean soup). English or Korean labels for the same set of pictures were presented in separate blocks. Reaction times were significantly faster for trials in which the auditory stimulus correctly named the object and the language matched the cultural bias. Providing the correct label in either language significantly attenuated the N400. A late positive component (LPC) was present for trials in which the label was correct, and was more positive when viewing Korean exemplars with English audio. No differences were seen when either English or Korean pictures were paired with Korean auditory stimuli. Therefore, effects of cultural context and semantic integration appear to be separate.Item Open Access Resolving Between-Language and Within-Language Competition in Bilinguals(2014-07-09) Chung-Fat-Yim, Ashley Kim; Bialystok, Ellen BFriesen et al. (2011) reported behavioural and electrophysiological differences in how monolinguals and bilinguals resolved lexical competition in a picture selection task (PST). Participants selected a named picture from two alternatives that were related semantically, phonologically, or unrelated. Both groups were slower on related pairs, but the additional RT cost on semantically-related pairs was smaller for bilinguals than for monolinguals. Importantly, monolinguals exhibited attenuated N400s for semantically-related pairs while bilinguals did not. The current study pursued these results with a homogeneous group of English-French bilinguals performing the task in both languages. Measures of executive control, language proficiency, and language production abilities were acquired to investigate their influence in resolving interlingual and intralingual competition. In both languages, semantic pairs generated longer RTs than phonological and unrelated pairs and as in the earlier study, there was no modulation of the N400. There was no evidence for a relation between the PST and the flanker task. However, a relation was found between vocabulary knowledge and the PST in the weaker language.