Chinese-English Bilinguals ERP Activating Effect for English #br#
during the Mother Tongue Semantic Processing
YANG Siqin1,2; JIANG Minghu1,2
1. Lab of Computational Linguistics, School of Humanities, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China;
2. Center for Psychology and Cognitive Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Abstract：Adopting Event Related Potential, measuring the reaction time, error rate and N400, this paper investigates whether the advanced Chinese-English bilinguals retrieve the second language when they are processing their mother language. The results reveal that the implicit conditions, the first English pronunciation did not reflect on the reaction time. In the ERP result, while bilinguals are confronted with semantic related judgments, N400 invoked by the language areas fails a significant difference from the implicit first English pronunciation. However, when faced with the semantic unrelated judgments, N400 shows significant difference between each implicit first English pronunciation conditions. It is concluded that when advanced bilinguals are making comparatively complex and semantic judgments, the second language can be unconsciously retrieved.
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2016, Vol. 30 
