From oscillations to language: behavioural and electroencephalographic studies on cross-language interactions

Speaking more than one language has a profound impact on both the mind and the brain. But how does the multilingual brain manage a native language as well as a non-native language, specifically when the non-native language was acquired later in development? In this thesis, we aimed to characterise the multilingual experience of late language learners in three ways. First, we examined how the cross-linguistic influence (CLI) between the native language and the non-native language influenced non-native comprehension and production. Second, we compared different multilingual populations to quantify the impact of language similarity on CLI and non-native comprehension and production. Third, we examined whether language similarity played a modulating role beyond language processing in terms of domain-general inhibitory control. These are critical issues because they speak directly to the notion of how the native language and the non-native language co-exist in the brain. Further, they help us characterise the functional organisation of these languages in the multilingual brain. Across several studies, we systematically explored these three issues by using several experimental paradigms and a combination of behavioural and electroencephalographic measures. Subsequently, we pushed the theoretical boundaries of the issues in question and contributed novel evidence to this area of research.This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 765556 - The Multilingual Mind.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Noun-phrase production as a window to language selection: an ERP study

Characterising the time course of non-native language production is critical in understanding the mechanisms behind successful communication. Yet, little is known about the modulating role of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) on the temporal unfolding of non-native production and the locus of target language selection. In this study, we explored CLI effects on non-native noun phrase production with behavioural and neural methods. We were particularly interested in the modulation of the P300 as an index for inhibitory control, and the N400 as an index for co-activation and CLI. German late learners of Spanish overtly named pictures while their EEG was monitored. Our results indicate traceable CLI effects at the behavioural and neural level in both early and late production stages. This suggests that speakers faced competition between the target and non-target language until advanced production stages. Our findings add important behavioural and neural evidence to the underpinnings of non-native production processes, in particular for late learners.Horizon 2020(H2020)Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Cross-linguistic interference in late language learners: an ERP study

Horizon 2020(H2020)No 765556Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension

Do people routinely pre-activate the meaning and even the phonological form of upcoming words? The most acclaimed evidence for phonological prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of electrical brain potentials (N400) to nouns and preceding articles by the probability that people use a word to continue the sentence fragment (‘cloze’). In our direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), pre-registered replication-analyses and exploratory Bayes factor analyses successfully replicated the noun-results but, crucially, not the article-results. Pre-registered single-trial analyses also yielded a statistically significant effect for the nouns but not the articles. Exploratory Bayesian single-trial analyses showed that the article-effect may be non-zero but is likely far smaller than originally reported and too small to observe without very large sample sizes. Our results do not support the view that readers routinely pre-activate the phonological form of predictable words.Additional co-authors: Simon Busch-Moreno, Xiao Fu, Jyrki Tuomainen, Eugenia Kulakova, E Matthew Husband, Zdenko Kohút, Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer, Falk Huetti

Limits on prediction in language comprehension: A multi-lab failure to replicate evidence for probabilistic pre-activation of phonology

In current theories of language comprehension, people routinely and implicitly predict upcoming words by pre-activating their meaning, morpho-syntactic features and even their specific phonological form. To date the strongest evidence for this latter form of linguistic prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience landmark publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of article- and noun-elicited electrical brain potentials (N400) by the pre-determined probability that people continue a sentence fragment with that word ('cloze'). In a direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), we failed to replicate the crucial article-elicited N400 modulation by cloze, while we successfully replicated the commonly-reported noun-elicited N400 modulation. This pattern of failure and success was observed in a pre-registered replication analysis, a pre-registered single-trial analysis, and in exploratory Bayesian analyses. Our findings do not support a strong prediction view in which people routinely pre-activate the phonological form of upcoming words, and suggest a more limited role for prediction during language comprehension

Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension

Do people routinely pre-activate the meaning and even the phonological form of upcoming words? The most acclaimed evidence for phonological prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of electrical brain potentials (N400) to nouns and preceding articles by the probability that people use a word to continue the sentence fragment (‘cloze’). In our direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), pre-registered replication-analyses and exploratory Bayes factor analyses successfully replicated the noun-results but, crucially, not the article-results. Pre-registered single-trial analyses also yielded a statistically significant effect for the nouns but not the articles. Exploratory Bayesian single-trial analyses showed that the article-effect may be non-zero but is likely far smaller than originally reported and too small to observe without very large sample sizes. Our results do not support the view that readers routinely pre-activate the phonological form of predictable words

Large-scale replication study reveals a limit on probabilistic prediction in language comprehension

Do people routinely pre-activate the meaning and even the phonological form of upcoming words? The most acclaimed evidence for phonological prediction comes from a 2005 Nature Neuroscience publication by DeLong, Urbach and Kutas, who observed a graded modulation of electrical brain potentials (N400) to nouns and preceding articles by the probability that people use a word to continue the sentence fragment (‘cloze’). In our direct replication study spanning 9 laboratories (N=334), pre-registered replication-analyses and exploratory Bayes factor analyses successfully replicated the noun-results but, crucially, not the article-results. Pre-registered single-trial analyses also yielded a statistically significant effect for the nouns but not the articles. Exploratory Bayesian single-trial analyses showed that the article-effect may be non-zero but is likely far smaller than originally reported and too small to observe without very large sample sizes. Our results do not support the view that readers routinely pre-activate the phonological form of predictable words

Dissociable effects of prediction and integration during language comprehension: Evidence from a large-scale study using brain potentials

Composing sentence meaning is easier for predictable words than for unpredictable words. Are predictable words genuinely predicted, or simply more plausible and therefore easier to integrate with sentence context? We addressed this persistent and fundamental question using data from a recent, large-scale (N = 334) replication study, by investigating the effects of word predictability and sentence plausibility on the N400, the brain's electrophysiological index of semantic processing. A spatiotemporally fine-grained mixed-effects multiple regression analysis revealed overlapping effects of predictability and plausibility on the N400, albeit with distinct spatiotemporal profiles. Our results challenge the view that the predictability-dependent N400 reflects the effects of either prediction or integration, and suggest that semantic facilitation of predictable words arises from a cascade of processes that activate and integrate word meaning with context into a sentence-level meaning

From oscillations to language: behavioural and electroencephalographic studies on cross-language interactions

Speaking more than one language has a profound impact on both the mind and the brain. But how does the multilingual brain manage a native language as well as a non-native language, specifically when the non-native language was acquired later in development? In this thesis, we aimed to characterise the multilingual experience of late language learners in three ways. First, we examined how the cross-linguistic influence (CLI) between the native language and the non-native language influenced non-native comprehension and production. Second, we compared different multilingual populations to quantify the impact of language similarity on CLI and non-native comprehension and production. Third, we examined whether language similarity played a modulating role beyond language processing in terms of domain-general inhibitory control. These are critical issues because they speak directly to the notion of how the native language and the non-native language co-exist in the brain. Further, they help us characterise the functional organisation of these languages in the multilingual brain. Across several studies, we systematically explored these three issues by using several experimental paradigms and a combination of behavioural and electroencephalographic measures. Subsequently, we pushed the theoretical boundaries of the issues in question and contributed novel evidence to this area of research.</p

Does your native language matter?: Neural correlates of typological similarity in non-native production

Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) and typological similarity are key features in multilingual language processing. Here, we study whether CLI effects in language production are more pronounced in typologically similar vs. dissimilar languages in late language learners. In a picture-naming task, we manipulated gender congruency and cognate status as indices for CLI in a group of Italian learners of Spanish and a group of German learners of Spanish. Further, we explored modulations of P300 amplitudes indexing inhibitory control. Behaviourally, we observed effects of CLI, but not of typological similarity. At the neural level, P300 amplitudes were modulated by CLI effects. However, we did not find evidence for a typological similarity effect on P300 amplitudes. Therefore, our results suggest a limited role of typological similarity. This study has crucial implications for nonnative language production mechanisms in light of the similarity between the native and the non-native language.Horizon 2020(H2020)Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic