Conflict resolution in sentence processing by bilinguals

Sylvain Moreno, Ellen Bialystok, Zofia Wodniecka & Claude Alain

Presented by: Kathrine Crowley

INTRODUCTION (200-400 words)

The primary topic of the study was to test the theory that bilingualism provided an advantage in measures of executive control. This theory had been supported in studies of bilingual children, but the researchers wanted to determine if bilingual adults exhibited similar levels of executive control as bilingual children. Previous to this research, Galambos and colleagues performed two studies which reported that bilingual children were more adept at judging and correcting sentences which contained syntax errors (Galambos & Goldin-Meadow, 1990; Galambos & Hakuta, 1988). With their results being replicated by Ricciardelli (1992) and Cromdal (1999). Despite the fair amount of research which had been conducted in the aforementioned studies, there had yet to be a study which focused on the significance of executive control in relation to clashes between syntactic and semantic values. The researchers hypothesized that bilinguals would score lower than monolinguals on behavioral measures. That ERPs would display typical results across all participants. That monolinguals would produce ELAN and LAN waves, but not bilinguals. That bilinguals would more efficiently handle processing the grammaticality task and that there would be no difference between monolinguals and bilinguals in efficiency of processing of the acceptability task. And finally, that bilingual’s brain activity would be bilateral and that monolingual’s would be left-lateralized.

METHODS (150-300 words)

14 monolingual (mean age 23.6 _ 3.1 years) and 14 bilingual (mean age 23.5 _ 4.5 years) adult participants were ultimately utilized in the study. The researchers controlled for participant confounds by determining that there were no significant differences between groups. However, monolinguals did score higher than bilinguals on English PPVT scores, (p < 0.05). A set of ocular eye movement was collected for each participant before and after the experiment in order to average eye movement. One-hundred-twenty sentence frames (Osterhout and Nicol 1999) were used to create correct, grammatical but semantically anomalous, meaningful but syntactically incorrect and semantically anomalous/syntactically incorrect sentences. Participants were seated in a soundproof room and were exposed to a screen which displayed a fixation cross followed by a random sentence displayed word-by-word. The participants were asked to judge whether a sentence was good or had something wrong with it (acceptability task) or if a sentence was grammatically correct or incorrect (grammaticality task). Accuracy was recorded along with ERPs. Brain activity was recorded using 64 electrodes, with some placed at the outer canthi; the inferior and superior orbit monitored eye movement. Brain Electrical Source Analysis software was used to compute the averages.

DISCUSSION (200-400 words)

The results of this study show that bilingualism in adults has an impact on sentence processing which provides an advantage in levels of executive control which had only previously been researched in bilingual children. The researchers found that bilingual adults displayed less effort in tasks which required conflict resolution and selective attention, therefore contributing to the foundation of bilingual geared language research which preceded their work. The article has been referenced 42 times on Google scholar with articles supporting, rejecting and building on the results of this study. Considering this wide utilization of the results of this study, one could argue that this research has generated much discussion, as is the nature of publishing in environments which encourage peer review. All research provides meaningful contributions to their respective fields, whether results are ultimately accepted or rejected by peers, as the initial work generates thought and productive research which more narrowly defines concepts. The generative thought which results from this study could lead one to develop a study which utilizes these measures to determine if multilinguals, with a language proficiency of three or more languages have an edge on not only monolinguals, but also bilinguals; basically, does the effect on levels of executive control of possessing multiple languages compound by the number of languages one possesses?

REFERENCES

Cromdal, J. (1999). Childhood bilingualism and metalinguistic skills: analysis and control in young swedish-english bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20(1), 1-20.

Galambos, S. J., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (1990). The effects of learning two languages on levels of metalinguistic awareness.Cognition, 34(1), 1-56.

Galambos, S. J., & Hakuta, K. (1988). Subject-specific and task-specific characteristics of metalinguistic awareness in bilingual children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9(2), 141-162.

Osterhout, L., & Nicol, J. (1999). On the distinctiveness, independence, and time course of the brain responses to syntactic and semantic anomalies. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14(3), 283-317.

Ricciardelli, L. A. (1992). Bilingualism and cognitive development in relation to threshold theory. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 21(4), 301-316.     

Fig. 1. Early Left Anterior Negativity and Left Anterior Negativity waves. Groups mean ERPs elicited by correct and syntactically incorrect sentences in (a) acceptability task and (b) grammaticality task at two frontal scalp sites: F7 (left hemisphere) and F8 (right hemisphere).

Fig. 2. N400. Means ERPs elicited by semantically anomalous sentences in (a) acceptability task and (b) grammaticality task for all participants at the midline central scalp site (Cz).     

Fig. 3. N400 and P600 difference wave effects. Group means ERPs elicited by correct, semantically anomalous and syntactically incorrect sentences in (a) acceptability task and (b) grammaticality task at the midline central (Cz) and parietal (Pz) sites

Fig. 4. (a): Comparison of the brain map amplitude between monolingual and bilingual groups in the acceptability task. (b): Comparison of the brain map amplitude between monolingual and bilingual groups in the grammaticality task. View from the back. Small dots represent electrode positions.

Fig. 5. Group means ERPs elicited by (a) correct, (b) semantically anomalous sentences in grammaticality task at the midline central scalp site (Cz).