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Basic Combinatorial Operations during Language Processing in English Monolinguals and Mandarin-English Bilinguals: Insights from Event-Related Potentials and Neural Oscillations
Poster C33 in Poster Session C, Friday, October 7, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm EDT, Millennium Hall
Yun-Ruei Ku1, Caitlin Hudac1, Spyridoula Cheimariou1, Jason Scofield1; 1The University of Alabama
Recent psycholinguistic studies have garnered support for the notion that multi-word sequences are more widespread and pervasive in sentence processing than previously assumed. Specifically, second language (L2) learners tend to produce fewer and less natural multi-word sequences compared to native speakers of the same language. Thus, this dissertation aims to examine event-related potential (ERP) correlates and neural oscillations of collocational processing using a verb-noun paradigm (e.g., play games). Multi-word sequences are believed to be stored and computed holistically, similar to the way single words are stored in and retrieved from semantic memory. However, the anticipatory and integration effects of collocations remain unknown. Thus, collocations provide a test ground for the fundamental mechanisms of the basic combinatorial processes by which words are constructed into phrases. While a handful of behavioral studies have examined L2 collocational acquisition, electrophysiological results would provide further insight into the combinatorial mechanisms that underlie cross-linguistic variations in phrase construction. This study aims to pinpoint the time windows and frequency bands at which the encoding of English verb-noun collocations differs between monolinguals and bilinguals. At the anticipatory stage, we expect to observe an enhanced anterior negativity in the high-constraint context compared to the neutral context as well as a beta power decrease, which may indicate a higher processing load induced by strong prediction. At the integration stage, we expect to observe a reduced N400 and theta activity for the collocations in the high-constraint condition but decreases in the beta and theta power for the non-collocations, which would suggest benefits of confirmed predictions and potential costs of disconfirmed predictions (Li et al., 2017). The differences between the anticipatory and integration stages of collocational processing will be compared between both English monolinguals and Mandarin-English bilinguals. Here, we propose an experiment wherein we will present a series of collocations and matched distractors (i.e., non-collocations) that were retrieved from the Corpus of Contemporary American English to 25 English monolinguals and 25 Mandarin Chinese learners of English during EEG collection as paid volunteers. A norming procedure of the carrier sentences was performed on 278 English native speakers to ensure the constraint of the sentences. Finally, 62 collocations and 248 carrier sentences in the four conditions of high-constraint collocation, high-constraint non-collocation, low-constraint collocation, and low-constraint non-collocation were produced. A 2 (Sentential Constraint: high or low) × 2 (Collocation Type: collocation or non-collocation) × 2 (Language Group: monolinguals or bilinguals) factorial design will be used. A series of behavioral and cognitive tasks (i.e., English proficiency test, AX-Continuous Performance Task, and demographic survey) will be performed prior to the EEG study. In addition, participants' EEG data will be recorded while they perform the AX-CPT. Following the above tasks, each participant will read 124 sentences within one of the four counterbalanced lists plus 120 filler sentences. Understanding the basic combinatorial operations during language processing will provide a critical bridge to rehabilitation and essential interventions for less proficient L2 readers.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Combinatorial Semantics, Multilingualism