Midgley Katherine J, Holcomb Phillip J, Grainger Jonathan
Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA.
Psychophysiology. 2009 May;46(3):551-65. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00784.x. Epub 2009 Mar 4.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) and masked translation priming served to examine the time-course of form and meaning activation during word recognition in second language learners. Targets were repetitions of, translations of, or were unrelated to the immediately preceding prime. In Experiment 1 all targets were in the participants' L2. In Experiment 2 all targets were in the participants' L1. In Exp 1 both within-language repetition and L1-L2 translation priming produced effects on the N250 component and the N400 component. In Experiment 2 only within-language repetition produced N250 effects, while both types of priming produced N400 effects. These results suggest rapid involvement of semantic representations during on-going form-level processing of printed words, and an absence of facilitatory connections between the form representations of non-cognate translation equivalents in L2 learners. The implications for bilingual theories of word processing are discussed.
事件相关电位（ERPs）和掩蔽翻译启动用于研究第二语言学习者单词识别过程中形式和意义激活的时间进程。目标词是前一个启动词的重复、翻译或与之无关。在实验1中，所有目标词均为参与者的第二语言。在实验2中，所有目标词均为参与者的第一语言。在实验1中，语言内重复和第一语言到第二语言的翻译启动对N250成分和N400成分均产生了影响。在实验2中，只有语言内重复产生了N250效应，而两种类型的启动均产生了N400效应。这些结果表明，在印刷单词正在进行的形式层面加工过程中，语义表征迅速参与其中，并且第二语言学习者中非同源翻译对等词的形式表征之间不存在促进性联系。文中讨论了这些结果对双语单词加工理论的启示。
