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Abstract:
Understanding how the human brain can represent two different
languages at once is important not only for understanding
bilingualism, but also for understanding the human language
capacity in general (e.g., deGroot and Kroll, 1997). For example,
a recent neuroimaging study has shown that, in late bilinguals,
the native language and the second language occupy separate
cortical regions in a language-sensitive area of the brain (Kim,
Relkin, Lee and Hirsch, 1997). This is consistent with
psycholinguistic results suggesting that the brain has a
"switching mechanism" that can, in a monolingual situation,
activate one language and deactivate the other (e.g., Macnamara
and Kushnir, 1971).
In the present study, we tested this account of bilingual
language representation using an experimental paradigm that
provides an "on-line" measure of mental processes during spoken
language comprehension in a visual context: headband-mounted
eyetracking (Tanenhaus, Spivey-Knowlton, Eberhard and Sedivy,
1995). In a monolingual session, Russian-English late bilinguals
were given spoken instructions to pick up a target object whose
Russian name sounded similar to the English name of another
object. Immediately after hearing the object's name, participants
frequently looked at both objects before finally fixating the
target object. Contrary to previous findings, these results
suggest parallel activation of the two lexicons during spoken
language comprehension in bilinguals.
deGroot, A and Kroll, J. (1997).
Tutorials in bilingualism: Psycholinguistic
perspectives.
Erlbaum, NJ.
Kim, K., Relkin, N., Lee, K., and Hirsch, J. (1997). Distinct
cortical areas associated with native and second languages.
Nature,
388, 171--174.
Macnamara, J and Kushnir, S. (1971). Linguistic independence in
bilinguals: The input switch.
Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior,
10, 480--487.
Tanenhaus, M., Spivey-Knowlton, M., Eberhard, K., and Sedivy, J.
(1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information during
spoken language comprehension.
Science,
268, 1632--1634.
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