Gilbert Annie C, Lee Jasmine G, Coulter Kristina, Wolpert Max A, Kousaie Shanna, Gracco Vincent L, Klein Denise, Titone Debra, Phillips Natalie A, Baum Shari R
School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Center for Research on Brain, Language and Music, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Front Psychol. 2021 Sep 17;12:705668. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.705668. eCollection 2021.
Previous studies of word segmentation in a second language have yielded equivocal results. This is not surprising given the differences in the bilingual experience and proficiency of the participants and the varied experimental designs that have been used. The present study tried to account for a number of relevant variables to determine if bilingual listeners are able to use native-like word segmentation strategies. Here, 61 French-English bilingual adults who varied in L1 (French or English) and language dominance took part in an audiovisual integration task while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Participants listened to sentences built around ambiguous syllable strings (which could be disambiguated based on different word segmentation patterns), during which an illustration was presented on screen. Participants were asked to determine if the illustration was related to the heard utterance or not. Each participant listened to both English and French utterances, providing segmentation patterns that included both their native language (used as reference) and their L2. Interestingly, different patterns of results were observed in the event-related potentials (online) and behavioral (offline) results, suggesting that L2 participants showed signs of being able to adapt their segmentation strategies to the specifics of the L2 (online ERP results), but that the extent of the adaptation varied as a function of listeners' language experience (offline behavioral results).
先前关于第二语言单词分割的研究结果并不明确。考虑到参与者的双语经历和熟练程度的差异以及所采用的各种实验设计，出现这种情况并不奇怪。本研究试图考虑一些相关变量，以确定双语听众是否能够使用类似母语的单词分割策略。在这里，61名英法双语成年人参与了一项视听整合任务，同时记录了事件相关脑电位（ERP），这些参与者在第一语言（L1，法语或英语）和语言优势方面存在差异。参与者听围绕模糊音节串构建的句子（这些音节串可以根据不同的单词分割模式进行消除歧义），在此期间屏幕上会呈现一幅插图。参与者被要求确定插图是否与听到的话语相关。每个参与者都听了英语和法语的话语，并提供了分割模式，其中包括他们的母语（用作参考）和第二语言（L2）。有趣的是，在事件相关电位（在线）和行为（离线）结果中观察到了不同的结果模式，这表明第二语言参与者表现出能够根据第二语言的具体情况调整其分割策略的迹象（在线ERP结果），但适应程度因听众的语言经验而异（离线行为结果）。
