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González Alonso, J., Alemán Bañón, J., DeLuca, V., Miller, D., Pereira Soares, S. M., Puig-Mayenco, E., Slaats, S., & Rothman, J. (2020). Event related potentials at initial exposure in third language acquisition: Implications from an artificial mini-grammar study. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 56: 100939. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2020.100939.
Abstract
The present article examines the proposal that typology is a major factor guiding transfer selectivity in L3/Ln acquisition. We tested first exposure in L3/Ln using two artificial languages (ALs) lexically based in English and Spanish, focusing on gender agreement between determiners and nouns, and between nouns and adjectives. 50 L1 Spanish-L2 English speakers took part in the experiment. After receiving implicit training in one of the ALs (Mini-Spanish, N = 26; Mini-English, N = 24), gender violations elicited a fronto-lateral negativity in Mini-English in the earliest time window (200–500 ms), although this was not followed by any other differences in subsequent periods. This effect was highly localized, surfacing only in electrodes of the right-anterior region. In contrast, gender violations in Mini-Spanish elicited a broadly distributed positivity in the 300–600 ms time window. While we do not find typical indices of grammatical processing such as the P600 component, we believe that the between-groups differential appearance of the positivity for gender violations in the 300–600 ms time window reflects differential allocation of attentional resources as a function of the ALs’ lexical similarity to English or Spanish. We take these differences in attention to be precursors of the processes involved in transfer source selection in L3/Ln. -
Weekes, B. S., Abutalebi, J., Mak, H.-K.-F., Borsa, V., Soares, S. M. P., Chiu, P. W., & Zhang, L. (2018). Effect of monolingualism and bilingualism in the anterior cingulate cortex: a proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy study in two centers. Letras de Hoje, 53(1), 5-12. doi:10.15448/1984-7726.2018.1.30954.
Abstract
Reports of an advantage of bilingualism on brain structure in young adult participants
are inconsistent. Abutalebi et al. (2012) reported more efficient monitoring of conflict during the
Flanker task in young bilinguals compared to young monolingual speakers. The present study
compared young adult (mean age = 24) Cantonese-English bilinguals in Hong Kong and young
adult monolingual speakers. We expected (a) differences in metabolites in neural tissue to result
from bilingual experience, as measured by 1H-MRS at 3T, (b) correlations between metabolic
levels and Flanker conflict and interference effects (c) different associations in bilingual and
monolingual speakers. We found evidence of metabolic differences in the ACC due to bilingualism,
specifically in metabolites Cho, Cr, Glx and NAA. However, we found no significant correlations
between metabolic levels and conflict and interference effects and no significant evidence of
differential relationships between bilingual and monolingual speakers. Furthermore, we found no
evidence of significant differences in the mean size of conflict and interference effects between
groups i.e. no bilingual advantage. Lower levels of Cho, Cr, Glx and NAA in bilingual adults
compared to monolingual adults suggest that the brains of bilinguals develop greater adaptive
control during conflict monitoring because of their extensive bilingual experience.
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