Search Abstracts | Symposia | Slide Sessions | Poster Sessions
Neural Substrates of Action Verb Embodiment in First and Second Language
Poster Session D, Saturday, October 26, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm, Great Hall 3 and 4
Jing Yang1, Siyi Tu2; 1Zhejiang University
There has been increasing neural evidence suggesting that semantic processing in first language (L1) relies on lexical representations grounded in the sensory and motor systems. However, the neural underpinnings of the embodiment of semantic processing in second language (L2) and the distinctions between L1 and L2 embodiment effect, however, remain largely unknown. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the neural substrates of L1 and L2 embodiment in 26 non-proficient Chinese-English bilinguals. Our participants were presented with verb pairs and were asked to make judgments on the semantic relatedness of the two verbs visually presented in a sequence. The unrelated conditions involved three types of verb pairs in both languages: 1) same-effector verb pairs, unrelated (SU, e.g., kick-run); 2) different-effector pairs, unrelated (DU, e.g., kick-grasp); 3) non-effector pairs, unrelated (NU as baseline, e.g., delay-emit). We compared the participants’ responses to same-effector verb pairs with those to the different-effector verb pairs, all in the semantic-unrelated trials, in order to look into the neural mechanism of effector-related embodiment. Compared with the performance in the baseline condition NU, participants’ responses were significantly faster in DU condition in L1, and in both DU and SU conditions in L2. The fMRI results revealed that, left middle frontal gyrus (MFG), superior/middle temporal gyrus (STG/MTG), inferior parietal lobule (IPL), supplementary motor area (SMA), precentral and postcentral cortex were more activated in the DU condition compared with the NU (baseline) in both L1 and L2, suggesting an active interaction between the representation system (motor regions) and the semantic control system (IFG, MTG, IPL) during verb similarity judgment. DU, compared with SU, displayed greater activation in motor regions (SMA, precentral/postcentral gyrus) in L1, and semantic control regions (MTG, IPL) in L2. Taken together, our findings suggest that, when embodied information facilitates decision, L2 recruits control and representation systems similar to L1 to process embodied words; when embodied information is task-irrelevant, the representation system was less involved in L2 but equally activated L2.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Multisensory or Sensorimotor Integration