Bi/Multi-lingualism
Saturday, October 01st, 2011 [17:20 - 19:20]
PS_2.118 - Tracing bilingual advantage in cognitive control: conflict processing and categorization switching
Marzecová, A. 1 , Bukowski, M. . 1 , Lupiáñez, J. 2 , Boros, M. 1 & Wodniecka, Z. 1
1 Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
Bilingual advantage in cognitive control is vastly documented, although several studies, mostly with young adults, failed to replicate the effect. To investigate effects of bilingualism on attentional control in this age group, early Hungarian-Polish bilinguals were compared to Hungarian monolinguals by means of two tasks. The first task tapped two types of cognitive conflict - S-R (Simon) and S-S (Stroop)- in conditions with vs. without distraction. Non-verbal (arrows) and verbal (words up and down) stimuli were used. Bilinguals and monolinguals did not differ in the efficiency of conflict resolution for either type of material, despite bilinguals being faster and more accurate than monolinguals when processing verbal stimuli. The second task was a categorization switching task with social stimuli (faces). Participants categorized faces either according to gender or age following an endogenous cue (colored frame). Although no significant between-group differences were observed in RT, bilinguals were more accurate than monolinguals. Bilingual advantage was most pronounced on trials with partial repetitions; on complete repetitions (i.e. the same task performed on consecutive trials), monolinguals were as accurate as bilinguals. The results suggest that bilinguals are more efficient than monolinguals when processing verbal material and demonstrate enhanced flexibility of categorization with increasing task demands.
PS_2.119 - The influence of second language instruction on first language literacy skills
Murphy, V. A. , Macaro, E. , Alba, S. & Cipolla, C.
Department of Education, University of Oxford
The focus of this project was to identify the extent to which L2 learning impacted upon L1 reading and spelling skills. This research adopted a pre-test - intervention -- post-test design comparing 3 groups of 8-year-old children who were matched on non-verbal IQ and who all speak English as a first language. The three groups comprised children who: 1) received L2 Italian instruction 2) who received L2 French instruction and 3) who received no L2 instruction across a 15 week instructional intervention in an overall sample of 152 children. At pre-test all children were tested on baseline measures of English reading and spelling and phonological awareness, as well as a measure of nonverbal IQ for matching purposes. At post-test the children were re-tested on the measures used at pre-test and the L2 groups were also given discrete tests of Italian and French vocabulary and phrases respectively. The results indicated that on some measures the group receiving L2 Italian outperformed the other groups suggesting that L2 instruction with a transparent Grapheme-Phoneme-Correspondence system can have a more facilitative effect on L1 reading and spelling. These results are discussed within the context of models of developing literacy and L2 development.
PS_2.120 - Is language control preserved in bilingual Alzheimer disease patients?
Calabria, M. 1 , Hernàndez, M. 2 , Marne, P. 1 , Juncadella, M. 3 , Reñé , R. 3 , Ortiz-Gil , J. 4 , Ugas, L. 4 , Lleó, A. 5 , Blesa, R. 5 & Costa, A. 1, 6
1 Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
2 Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Trento, Italy
3 Unitat de Diagnòstic i Tractament de Demències, Servei de Neurologia de l’Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge, Spain
4 Hospital General de Granollers, Spain
5 Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain
6 Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Barcelona, Spain
Bilinguals are faster to produce words in their first language (L1) when the distractor word corresponds to the target’s translation (L2) than when the distractor is an unrelated word. Could this facilitation in lexical competition be abolished in patients with an impaired cognitive control? To test it we used a cross-language version of the Stroop task in bilingual older adults, MCI and AD patients. Participants were required to name colour in Catalan with three types of Spanish words: the name of the colour, the name of a different colour and the name of an unrelated word. Older adults and patients showed the same amount of cross-language identity facilitation: 35 ms faster to name colour in L1 when the distractor word in L2 was the name of the colour than when it was an unrelated word. But slower naming latencies were found when participants had to name words with a name of different colour. This interference effect was larger for MCI (255 ms) and AD (308 ms) compared to older adult controls (177 ms). It is concluded that dementia does not affect the lexical competition during speech production since the cross-language identity facilitation was reliable in patients as in older controls.
PS_2.121 - Counterfactual reasoning in Chinese-English bilinguals
Bassetti, B.
University of York (UK)
The English language differentiates factual and counterfactual conditionals by means of verb mood, whereas the Chinese language does not explicitly differentiate the two types of conditionals. Past research presented controversial evidence of differences between English and Chinese speakers’ inferencing from counterfactual stories (Bloom, 1981), which all subsequent studies failed to replicate (e.g., Au, 1984; Liu, 1985). The present study tested the hypothesis that Chinese-English bilinguals’ inferences about counterfactual stories differ when stories are presented in English or Chinese. Participants read two short stories (one in each language) and answered comprehension questions. Results confirmed effects of language of presentation. A second experiment compared Chinese-English bilinguals and (older) monolingual Chinese speakers performing the same task. Bilinguals and monolinguals performed differently. Results will be discussed in terms of linguistic relativity and bilingual cognition. REFERENCES Au, T.K. (1984). Counterfactuals: In reply to Alfred Bloom. Cognition, 17(3), 289-302.
Bloom, A. (1981). The Linguistic Shaping of Thought: A Study in the Impact of Language on Thinking in China and the West. Hillsfale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Liu, L.G. (1985). Reasoning counterfactually in Chinese: Are there any obstacles? Cognition, 21(3), 239-270.
PS_2.122 - A bilingual ERP study on the interaction of form and meaning of color concept: A Whorfian prospective
Tzeng, A. K.
Chung Yuan Christian University
Whorfian hypothesis (SWH) proposes a systematic relationship between grammatical categories of a language and the way the users understand the world. SWH is robust but sometimes misleading (Martin, 1986; Pullman, 1991). Kay has done extensive work using color names. The purpose of current study was to further investigate color SWH with Mandarin-English bilinguals. Mandarin and English differ significantly in their composition rules to form color terms. Three experiments were conducted. In Study one, more Stroop interference was found in L1 than L2. In study two, participants were to categorically judge two color patches presented simultaneously. In study three, participants were to decide color categories of congruent color words in L1 and L2. As expected, behavioral and ERP results both showed no difference in study two. Larger N400 was found in L1 than L2 in study three. We then concluded SWH was accounted for by the difference of the two languages.
PS_2.123 - Do words in the bilingual’s two lexicons compete for selection? Evidence from Polish-English bilinguals
Wodniecka, Z. 1 , Zeelenberg, R. 2 , Marzecová, A. 1 , Szewczyk, J. 1 & Taft, M. 3
1 Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
2 Institute of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam , The Netherlands
3 School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
In bilinguals, both languages are activated in parallel. How does this simultaneous activation affect language selection? Polish-English bilinguals with varying degrees of language balance participated in a competitor priming paradigm study. During the study-phase, participants read words presented in either English or Polish and performed a word completion task. During the test phase, participants named pictures in both languages. The pictures were either 1) old items named in the same language as during study (congruent), 2) old items named in the other language (incongruent) or 3) nonstudied items. Half of the participants named pictures in separate language blocks and half switched between languages within block. Participants were faster to name congruent items than new items, but the item repetition effect was attenuated in the incongruent condition. When pictures were named in L1, participants were as slow for the incongruent items as they were for new items (and even slower when naming involved switching between languages). When pictures were named in L2, the pattern depended on L2 proficiency: balanced bilinguals showed a similar pattern as for L1, whereas unbalanced showed no competition effect for incongruent items. The results indicate involvement of inhibition during language selection.
PS_2.124 - Cross-situational learning in mono- and bilingual adults
Franco, A. , San Anton, M. E. , Destrebecqz, A. & Cleeremans, A.
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Prior research has shown that learners possess powerful statistical learning abilities to solve the word-to-world mapping problem. However, little is known about people’s capacity to use statistical information to map a new word onto an already known object. Here, we explore monolingual and bilingual participants’ ability to map two different words onto the same object. To do so, we adapted the cross-situational learning paradigm proposed by Smith & Yu (2008). Participants were first exposed to twelve word-referent pairs (Language A). They were then exposed to another set of twelve word-referent pairs (Language B) composed of the same objects but now associated to new words. On each trial, two spoken words were presented with the two related objects along with 0, 2 or 4 distractors. The test phase consisted in an adaptation of the Process Dissociation Procedure (Jacoby, 1991) so as to test people’s ability to consciously control their knowledge. We found that monolingual and bilingual participants learn both languages in the 0 distractors condition. However, in the 2 and 4 distractors condition, we found that while both groups learn Language A equally well, only bilinguals were able to learn Language B.