Marian Viorica, Hayakawa Sayuri
Northwestern University, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Oklahoma State University, Department of Psychology.
Curr Dir Psychol Sci. 2025 May 20. doi: 10.1177/09637214251339455.
Hearing a single word can initiate a sequence of activation that spreads from the representation of the word (e.g., "candy") to words that share auditory and visual form (e.g., "candle") and the concepts those words reference (e.g., the idea of a ). In bilinguals, this co-activation spreads both within and across languages to words that share form or meaning in either or both languages. This parallel activation across two languages has cascading effects on higher-order cognitive functions like attention (e.g., what people focus on in a visual scene), memory (e.g., what people remember seeing), and semantic organization (e.g., how concepts are represented and grouped based on their meanings). Here, we consider how the consequences of language co-activation extend beyond the linguistic domain to impact the broader cognitive system, and conclude that the interactivity of languages in the bilingual mind fundamentally transforms mental operations.
听到一个单词就能启动一系列激活过程，该过程从这个单词的表征（例如“糖果”）传播到在听觉和视觉形式上与之共享的单词（例如“蜡烛”）以及这些单词所指代的概念（例如一个……的概念）。对于双语者而言，这种共同激活会在同一语言内以及跨语言传播到在其中一种或两种语言中共享形式或意义的单词。这种跨两种语言的并行激活对诸如注意力（例如人们在视觉场景中关注的内容）、记忆（例如人们记得看到的内容）和语义组织（例如概念如何根据其意义进行表征和分组）等高阶认知功能具有连锁效应。在此，我们探讨语言共同激活的后果如何超出语言领域，进而影响更广泛的认知系统，并得出结论：双语者大脑中语言的交互性从根本上改变了心理操作。
