Which words are activated during bilingual word production?

Whether words are or are not activated within the lexicon of the nonused language is an important question for accounts of bilingual word production. Prior studies have not led to conclusive results, either because alternative accounts could be proposed for their findings or because activation could have been artificially induced by the experimental paradigms. Moreover, previous data only involved target translations, and nothing is known about the activation of nontarget words in the nonused language. The picture–picture interference paradigm was used here, since it allowed the activation of nontarget words to be determined without showing stimuli that could artificially activate the nonused language. Proficient Spanish–Catalan speakers were presented with pairs of partially overlapping colored pictures and were instructed to name the green picture and ignore the red picture. In Experiment 1, distractor pictures with cognate names interfered more than distractor pictures with noncognate names. In Experiment 2, facilitation was observed when the names of the distractor pictures in the nonused language were phonologically related to the names of the target pictures. Overall, these results indicate that nontarget words are activated in the nonused language, at least in the case of proficient bilingual speakers. These results help researchers to constrain theories of bilingual lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

“Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals”: Correction.

Reports an error in "Cognitive control and lexical access in younger and older bilinguals" by Ellen Bialystok, Fergus Craik and Gigi Luk (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2008[Jul], Vol 34[4], 859-873). An incorrect figure was printed due to an error in the production process. The correct version of Figure 1b is provided in the correction. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2008-08549-012.) Ninety-six participants, who were younger (20 years) or older (68 years) adults and either monolingual or bilingual, completed tasks assessing working memory, lexical retrieval, and executive control. Younger participants performed most of the tasks better than older participants, confirming the effect of aging on these processes. The effect of language group was different for each type of task: Monolinguals and bilinguals performed similarly on working memory tasks, monolinguals performed better on lexical retrieval tasks, and bilinguals performed better on executive control tasks, with some evidence for larger language group differences in older participants on the executive control tasks. These results replicate findings from individual studies obtained using only 1 type of task and different participants. The confirmation of this pattern in the same participants is discussed in terms of a suggested explanation of how the need to manage 2 language systems leads to these different outcomes for cognitive and linguistic functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Language lateralization of Chinese-English bilingual patients with temporal lobe epilepsy: A functional MRI study.

Functional MRI was used to examine language lateralization of Chinese characters and English words associated with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) in Chinese-English bilinguals with left or right TLE. The results suggest that the neural basis of processing Chinese and English seems to be different, as normal controls demonstrated left hemispheric lateralization in reading English words but bi-hemispheric lateralization in reading Chinese characters. This difference in the neural bases of Chinese and English processing was found to affect the patterns in change-of-language processing associated with TLE. That is, whereas left-TLE patients were more likely than right-TLE patients to demonstrate a bi-hemispheric language involvement in reading English, both left- and right-TLE patients demonstrated primarily bilateral hemispheric involvement for reading Chinese characters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of bilingualism and computer video game experience on the Simon task.

A group of 97 participants who were monolingual or bilingual and who had extensive practice playing computer video games or not completed two Simon tasks. The tasks were presented in two conditions that manipulated the number of response switches required in each block of trials. Bilingualism and video-game experience each influenced a different aspect of performance: Video-game players were faster in most conditions, including control conditions that did not include conflict from irrelevant position; bilinguals were faster only in a condition that required the most controlled attention to resolve conflict from the position and the stimulus. The results show the potential of experience to modify performance and point to subtle processing differences in various versions of the Simon task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of language-acquisition contexts on bilingualism.

"Bilinguals were classified as having learned their two languages in either separated or fused contexts… . It was found that experience in separated contexts comparatively increases the associative independence of translated equivalents in the bilingual's two languages. If the bilingual has learned his two languages in culturally distinctive contexts, the semantic differences between translated equivalents is comparatively increased. There was no difference found in faculty to switch from one language to the other than can be attributed to contextual influences." From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:1GH39L. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

应用数字信息技术和双语的工程图学创新教育

面向“卓越计划”,针对工程图学课程体系创新教育的改革需求,依据多媒体教学和双语教学实践,研究应用数字信息技术和双语工程图学创新教育模式。提出合理应用数字信息技术和分级适度应用双语进行教学及助学,其工程图学创新教育模式不仅有利于达到工程图学课程体系的教学目标,而且为培养卓越人才营造了学习环境。     

高校计算机课程双语教学探讨

介绍了高校双语课程的含义,探讨了高校计算机课程双语教学的目标、基本理念、教学的实施等。结合我国高校的现状,分析了影响我国高校计算机课程双语教学的因素,并对教学中的几个问题提出了一些看法和思路。     

Investigating linguistic relativity through bilingualism: The case of grammatical gender.

The authors investigated linguistic relativity effects by examining the semantic effects of grammatical gender (present in Italian but absent in English) in fluent bilingual speakers as compared with monolingual speakers. In an error-induction experiment, they used responses by monolingual speakers to establish a baseline for bilingual speakers and show that gender affects the semantic substitution errors made by monolingual Italian speakers compared with monolingual English speakers. They then showed that Italian-English bilingual speakers behave like monolingual English speakers when the task is in English and like monolingual Italian speakers when the task is in Italian, hence exhibiting appropriate semantic representations for each language. These results show that for bilingual speakers there is intraspeaker relativity in semantic representations and, therefore, that gender does not have a conceptual, nonlinguistic effect. The results also have implications for models of bilingual semantic memory and processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Forward and Backward Number Translation Requires Conceptual Mediation in Both Balanced and Unbalanced Bilinguals.

It is much debated whether translation is semantically mediated or based on word-word associations at the lexical level. In 2 experiments with Dutch (L1)-French (L2) bilinguals, the authors showed that there is a semantic number magnitude effect in both forward and backward translation of number words: It takes longer to translate number words representing large quantities (e.g., acht, huit [eight]) than small quantities (e.g., twee, deux [two]). In a 3rd experiment, the authors replicated these effects with number words that had been acquired only just before the translation task. Finally, it was shown that the findings were not due to the restricted semantic context of the stimuli. These findings strongly suggest that translation processes can be semantically mediated in both directions, even at low levels of L2 proficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: Evidence for nonselective lexical access.

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. In the present study, the authors investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a 2nd language (L2) lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and nonidentical cognate words (e.g., banaan-banana) presented in isolation than control words. A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment that used eyetracking, the authors showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)