Novel L2 words do not facilitate but interfere with their L1 translations during picture naming – behavioural and event-related potential evidence

<p>Early and late bilinguals name pictures in their native language faster when accompanied by the name’s translation equivalent from their second language. Here, we tested whether this effect also obtains with recently learned L2 words. Participants learned novel names for 36 familiar objects via a statistical association procedure. These novel words and their L1 translations were subsequently used as auditory (identical, semantic, unrelated) distractors in a picture–word interference task. Participants named the pictures with their L1 name (Experiments 1 and 2) or with their novel name (Experiment 2). Against our prediction, the L2 translations led to interference instead of facilitation in L1 naming. The reverse situation (L2 naming, L1 distractor) showed no interference. In event-related potentials, identical distractors induced a reduced N400 in all conditions except in the one that showed behavioural interference. The results are discussed in relation to models of bilingual language production.</p

Inflectional complexity and experience affect plural processing in younger and older readers of Dutch and German

<p>According to dual-route models of morphological processing, regular inflections can be retrieved as whole-word forms or decomposed into morphemes. Baayen, Dijkstra, and Schreuder [(1997). Singulars and plurals in Dutch: Evidence for a parallel dual-route model. <i>Journal of Memory and Language</i>, <i>37</i>, 94–117. doi:10.1006/jmla.1997.2509] proposed a dual-route model in which singular-dominant plurals (“brides”) are decomposed, while plural-dominant plurals (“peas”) are accessed as whole-word units. We report two lexical-decision experiments investigating how plural processing is influenced by participants’ age and morphological complexity of the language (German/Dutch). For all Dutch participants and older German participants, we replicated the interaction between number and dominance reported by Baayen and colleagues. Younger German participants showed a main effect of number, indicating decomposition of all plurals. Access to stored forms seems to depend on morphological richness and experience with word forms. The data pattern fits neither full-decomposition nor full-storage models, but is compatible with dual-route models.</p

Figure 1

<p>Left and right: Global Power of Minimum Norm Estimates separated by hemisphere, groups and conditions. Top middle: Sensors groups (red circles) selected for the analysis of brain responses regarding the M170 projected onto a standard brain model.</p

Mapping of Minimum Norm Estimates for the time interval of the M170 (displayed in an early and a late interval) separated by groups and conditions.

<p>Mapping of Minimum Norm Estimates for the time interval of the M170 (displayed in an early and a late interval) separated by groups and conditions.</p

Number of correct behavioural responses in all conditions and laterality index

<p>Number of correct behavioural responses in all conditions and laterality index</p

Time course of activity for the M170 averaged across conditions and displayed separately for groups and hemispheres (error bars represent one standard error).

<p>Time course of activity for the M170 averaged across conditions and displayed separately for groups and hemispheres (error bars represent one standard error).</p

Predictions of the three main approaches with respect to the issues under investigation.

<p>Predictions of the three main approaches with respect to the issues under investigation.</p

Grand-averaged source waveforms for the experimental odd-ball sequences contrasting frequent/infrequent nasal place feature assimilations embedded in appropriate/inappropriate phonemic context.

<p>Robust mismatch activity was present in both hemispheres in all conditions in the interval 170–410 ms following stimulus (shown below the left panel) onset.</p

Mean amplitude of the identity mismatch (iMMN) in 170–410 ms post-stimulus interval.

<p>The iMMN reflects oddball effects on the same speech token presented as deviant and standard across stimulation blocks. As predicted, an asymmetry in mismatch activity was observed between specified and underspecified segments only for contextually appropriate cases. Compared to the frequent (/n/ to /m/) change from the appropriate context, all other conditions showed significant enhancements in mismatch amplitude. Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.</p

Seeing for speaking: Semantic and lexical information provided by briefly presented, naturalistic action scenes - Table

<p>Seeing for speaking: Semantic and lexical information provided by briefly presented, naturalistic action scenes</p> - Tabl