Psychology of Language and Bilingualism Lab, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.
Psychology of Language and Bilingualism Lab, Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 Apr;141:107390. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107390. Epub 2020 Feb 11.
The accumulating evidence suggests that prior usage of a second language (L2) leads to processing costs on the subsequent production of a native language (L1). However, it is unclear what mechanism underlies this effect. It has been proposed that the L1 cost reflects inhibition of L1 representation acting during L1 production; however, previous studies exploring this issue were inconclusive. It is also unsettled whether the mechanism operates on the whole-language level or is restricted to translation equivalents in the two languages. We report a study that allowed us to address both issues behaviorally with the use of ERPs while focusing on the consequences of using L2 on the production of L1. In our experiment, native speakers of Polish (L1) and learners of English (L2) named a set of pictures in L1 following a set of pictures in either L1 or L2. Half of the pictures were repeated from the preceding block and half were new; this enabled dissociation of the effects on the level of the whole language from those specific to individual lexical items. Our results are consistent with the notion that language after-effects operate at a whole-language level. Behaviorally, we observed a clear processing cost on the whole-language level and a small facilitation on the item-specific level. The whole-language effect was accompanied by an enhanced, fronto-centrally distributed negativity in the 250-350 ms time-window which we identified as the N300 (in contrast to previous research, which probably misidentified the effect as the N2), a component that presumably reflects retrieval difficulty of relevant language representations during picture naming. As such, unlike previous studies that reported N2 for naming pictures in L1 after L2 use, we propose that the reported ERPs (N300) indicate that prior usage of L2 hampers lexical access to names in L1. Based on the literature, the after-effects could be caused by L1 inhibition and/or L2 interference, but the ERPs so far have not been informative about the causal mechanism.
越来越多的证据表明，先前使用第二语言 (L2) 会导致母语 (L1) 后续产生的处理成本。然而，目前尚不清楚这种效应的机制是什么。有人提出，L1 成本反映了在 L1 产生过程中对 L1 表示的抑制作用；然而，之前探索这一问题的研究尚无定论。也不清楚该机制是在整个语言层面上运作，还是仅限于两种语言中的翻译对等物。我们报告了一项研究，该研究通过使用 ERP 从行为上解决了这两个问题，同时专注于使用 L2 对 L1 产生的影响。在我们的实验中，波兰语母语者 (L1) 和英语学习者 (L2) 在以 L1 命名一组图片后，会根据之前的一组图片在 L1 或 L2 中命名一组图片。一半的图片是从前一个块中重复的，另一半是新的；这使得我们能够将整个语言层面的影响与特定于单个词汇项目的影响区分开来。我们的结果与语言后效在整个语言层面上起作用的观点一致。从行为上看，我们在整个语言层面上观察到了明显的处理成本，而在特定于项目的层面上则观察到了轻微的促进作用。整体语言效应伴随着 250-350 毫秒时间窗口中增强的、额中央分布的负性，我们将其识别为 N300（与之前的研究不同，之前的研究可能错误地将该效应识别为 N2），这一成分可能反映了在图片命名过程中检索相关语言表示的难度。因此，与之前报告在使用 L2 后 L1 命名图片时报告 N2 的研究不同，我们提出报告的 ERP（N300）表明，先前使用 L2 会阻碍 L1 中名称的词汇访问。根据文献，后效可能是由 L1 抑制和/或 L2 干扰引起的，但到目前为止，ERP 还没有提供关于因果机制的信息。
