Valdés Kroff Jorge R, Román Patricia, Dussias Paola E
Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States.
Department of Psychology, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Seville, Spain.
Front Psychol. 2020 Sep 3;11:2138. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02138. eCollection 2020.
Prior studies using the event-related potential (ERP) technique show that integrating sentential code-switches during online processing leads to a broadly distributed late positivity component (LPC), while processing semantically unexpected continuations instead leads to the emergence of an N400 effect. While the N400 is generally assumed to index lexico-semantic processing, the LPC has two different interpretations. One account suggests that it reflects the processing of an improbable or unexpected event, while an alternative account proposes sentence-level reanalysis. To investigate the relative costs of semantic to language-based unexpectancies (i.e., code-switches), the current study tests 24 Spanish-English bilinguals in an ERP reading study. Semantically constrained Spanish frames either varied in their semantic expectancy (high vs. low expectancy) and/or their language continuation (same-language vs. code-switch) while participants' electrophysiological responses were recorded. The Spanish-to-English switch direction provides a more naturalistic test for integration costs to code-switching as it better approximates the code-switching practices of the target population. Analyses across three time windows show a main effect for semantic expectancy in the N400 time window and a main effect for code-switching in the LPC time window. Additional analyses based on the self-reported code-switching experience of the participants suggest an early positivity linked to less experience with code-switching. The results highlight that not all code-switches lead to similar integration costs and that prior experience with code-switching is an important additional factor that modulates online processing.
先前使用事件相关电位（ERP）技术的研究表明，在在线处理过程中整合句子代码切换会导致广泛分布的晚期正波成分（LPC），而处理语义上意外的延续则会导致N400效应的出现。虽然一般认为N400反映词汇语义处理，但LPC有两种不同的解释。一种观点认为它反映了对不太可能或意外事件的处理，而另一种观点则提出了句子层面的重新分析。为了研究语义意外与基于语言的意外（即代码切换）的相对成本，本研究在一项ERP阅读研究中测试了24名西班牙-英语双语者。语义受限的西班牙语框架在语义预期（高预期与低预期）和/或语言延续（同语言与代码切换）方面有所不同，同时记录参与者的电生理反应。从西班牙语到英语的切换方向为代码切换的整合成本提供了更自然的测试，因为它更接近目标人群的代码切换实践。在三个时间窗口进行的分析显示，在N400时间窗口中语义预期有主效应，在LPC时间窗口中代码切换有主效应。基于参与者自我报告的代码切换经验的额外分析表明，与较少的代码切换经验相关的早期正波。结果突出表明，并非所有的代码切换都会导致相似的整合成本，并且先前的代码切换经验是调节在线处理的一个重要附加因素。
