giannelli, f. 1, 2 , morucci, p. . 3 & molinaro, n. . 3, 4
1 Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
2 Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, IDIBELL, L?Hospitalet de Ll., Spain
3 BCBL, Basque center on Cognition Brain and Language, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain
4 Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain
We examined the effects of verbal labels on the pre-activation of conceptual information. Words provide top-down information to the visual processing by acting as categorical cues. Auditory cues perceived ahead of a picture can activate visual predictions. For example, the acoustically presented word ?dog? or a barking sound pre-activate visual representations corresponding to a dog shape. The picture that subsequently appears is processed according to these predictions. If predictions are accurate, they will help to identify a cued image or to discard a nonmatching image. Native speakers have been found to be faster at recognizing an image after hearing a word label than after hearing a non-verbal cue. The word label advantage provides the visual system with a set of priors that ease the processing of incoming stimuli. What about bilingual speakers? Would the label advantage be equally strong when words are presented in one language or the other?
In the present experiment we analyzed two groups of highly proficient Spanish (L1) - Basque (L2), and Basque (L1)-Spanish (L2) bilingual speakers. Participants heard a verbal cue in Spanish (e.g., perro, \"dog\"), in Basque (e.g. txakurra) or in an equally informative non-verbal cue (e.g., dog bark). After the auditory stimuli, a picture appeared on a screen. The picture could match or mismatch with the auditory cue. Participants had to indicate whether the picture matched or not with what they heard. We recorded EEGs time-locked to the onset of the image. Our aim was to determine whether participants present an advantage in preactivating images when primed with a word in their native language, as compared to a word in the second language. We used the non-verbal cues as a control condition, as no difference should emerge between groups in this case. Preliminary results will be presented and discussed.