Workman L, Brookman F, Mayer P, Rees V, Bellin W
Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd, Wales, UK.
Laterality. 2000 Oct;5(4):289-313. doi: 10.1080/713754385.
In order to test the hypothesis that monolinguals differ from bilinguals in their pattern of language lateralisation and to examine the relative merits of language-acquisitional versus language-specific factors, two experiments involving divided screen presentation of two languages were conducted using Welsh/English speaking participants. In the first experiment 80 monolingual teenagers were compared to 80 bilingual teenagers on a tachistoscopic "visual half-field" test of Welsh and English nouns and verbs. ANOVA revealed a greater left hemisphere advantage for Welsh-English bilinguals as compared to English monolinguals. Thus, in contrast to previous studies, in our bilinguals there was evidence of greater left hemisphere involvement in the processing of language. In the second experiment, four separate groups of 40 teenagers, varying in the age and manner of acquisition of their languages, were compared on the same test of Welsh and English words. These groups can be viewed as graded from the early to late bilinguals. ANOVA revealed a greater left hemisphere advantage when processing Welsh as compared to English words for all four groups. However no significant difference was observed between the four groups in respect of laterality for Welsh and English, indicating an equally greater left hemisphere bias for all four groups when processing Welsh words. We discuss these results in terms of a language-specific effect and suggest the specific orthography of the Welsh language (for individually presented nouns and verbs) promotes a left hemisphere advantage over and above language-acquisitional factors.
为了验证单语者和双语者在语言侧化模式上存在差异这一假设，并探究语言习得因素与语言特异性因素的相对优势，我们以讲威尔士语/英语的参与者为对象，进行了两项涉及两种语言分屏展示的实验。在第一个实验中，我们在一项对威尔士语和英语名词及动词的速示器“视觉半视野”测试中，将80名单语青少年与80名双语青少年进行了比较。方差分析显示，与英语单语者相比，威尔士语-英语双语者的左半球优势更大。因此，与之前的研究不同，在我们的双语者中，有证据表明左半球在语言处理过程中的参与度更高。在第二个实验中，我们在对威尔士语和英语单词的相同测试中，比较了四组各40名青少年，这四组青少年在语言习得的年龄和方式上有所不同。这些组可以看作是从早期双语者到晚期双语者的一个梯度。方差分析显示，对于所有四组来说，处理威尔士语单词时的左半球优势比处理英语单词时更大。然而，在威尔士语和英语的侧化方面，四组之间没有观察到显著差异，这表明在处理威尔士语单词时，所有四组的左半球偏向程度同样更高。我们从语言特异性效应的角度讨论了这些结果，并提出威尔士语的特定拼写方式（针对单独呈现的名词和动词）在语言习得因素之外，促进了左半球优势。
