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Neural mechanisms underlying the processing of Chinese and English words in a word generation task: An event‐related potential study
Author(s) -
Qiu Jiang,
Li Hong,
Wei Yonggang,
Liu Qiang,
Zhang Ye,
Zhang Qinglin
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2008.00703.x
Subject(s) - psychology , event related potential , word processing , word (group theory) , perception , task (project management) , linguistics , cognition , natural language processing , computer science , neuroscience , philosophy , management , economics
Abstract Event‐related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to examine the spatiotemporal cortical activation patterns underlying Chinese and English word generation (forming a new word by adding a stroke or a letter to an old Chinese or English word) for low‐ and high‐proficiency Chinese–English bilinguals. The results revealed that early visual perceptual processing and word identification were similar between the two languages for the N120 and P220 waveforms. However, a greater negative potential (N250–350) was associated with Chinese words than with English words between 250 and 350 ms. Subsequently, for fluent Chinese bilinguals, Chinese words elicited a more positive ERP deflection (LPC) than did English words between 350 and 800 ms. The differences in ERP components between Chinese and English words indicates that there might be a real difference in the processing demands between these languages, and that the processing of English might be affected by the proficiency of the second language.