Davidson, D. J. 1 , Carcedo, D. 1 & Carreiras, M. 1, 2
1 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language. Donostia. Spain
2 Ikerbasque. Basque Foundation for Science
Previous studies of lexical learning using magnetoencephalography (MEG) have investigated the learning of new words within a first language (L1). However, it is less clear whether similar responses will be obtained for learners of a second language (L2) in early stages of lexical learning. This study examined the evoked fields in response to Spanish and Basque word pairs presented as speech in a paired-associate study-test memory paradigm in Spanish learners of Basque. The hypothesis was that learners would treat Basque words as non-words or pseudowords compared to already-known Spanish words. This hypothesis predicts that the amplitude of the evoked field to the Basque words would be greater than that of the Spanish words within a late component (0.3 to 0.6 s) evoked time window. The Spanish-native participants (n=13) heard six Basque-Spanish noun pairs presented as a list, and then recalled the Basque (Spanish) target words in response to the Spanish (Basque) cue words (study-recall repeated four times). In total, eight different lists of six words were presented. The spatial topography of the evoked fields was largely similar for the L1 and L2 responses. However, averaged over all repetitions, the amplitude of the evoked field for the gradiometer response was larger to the Spanish words compared to the Basque words in a late 0.5 to 0.6 s time window, in contrast to the predicted response. These results suggest that during initial phase of learning of a new L2 spoken word, participants do not treat the to-be-learned lexical item as a non-word or a pseudoword, but rather as a new lexical item, weakly-linked to the already-existing native L1 word or concept.