University of Granada, Spain.
Br J Psychol. 2010 Nov;101(Pt 4):679-93. doi: 10.1348/000712609X480571. Epub 2010 Feb 24.
This study examines the time course of inhibitory processes in Spanish-English bilinguals, using the procedure described in Macizo, Bajo, and Martín. Bilingual participants were required to decide whether pairs of English words were related. Critical word pairs contained a word that shared the same orthography across languages but differed in meaning (interlingual homographs such as pie, meaning foot in Spanish). In Expts 1 and 2, participants were slower to respond to homographs presented along with words related to the Spanish meaning of the homograph as compared to control words. This result agrees with the view that bilinguals non-selectively activate their two languages irrespective of the language they are using. In addition, bilinguals also slowed their responses when the English translation of the Spanish homograph meaning was presented 500 ms after responding to homographs (Expt 1). This result suggests that bilinguals inhibited the irrelevant homograph meaning. However, the inhibitory effect was not observed in Expt 2 when the between-trial interval was fixed to 750 ms which suggests that inhibition decayed over time.
这项研究使用 Macizo、Bajo 和 Martín 所描述的程序，考察了西班牙语-英语双语者抑制过程的时程。双语参与者被要求判断英语单词对是否相关。关键单词对包含一个在两种语言中具有相同拼写但含义不同的单词（如 pie，在西班牙语中意为脚）。在实验 1 和实验 2 中，与控制词相比，参与者对与同形异义词的西班牙语含义相关的词的反应较慢。这一结果与双语者非选择性地激活他们的两种语言的观点一致，无论他们正在使用哪种语言。此外，当呈现西班牙语同形异义词含义的英文翻译 500 毫秒后，双语者也会减慢对同形异义词的反应（实验 1）。这一结果表明双语者抑制了不相关的同形异义词含义。然而，当试验间间隔固定为 750 毫秒时，实验 2 中并未观察到抑制效应，这表明抑制随时间而衰减。
