An ERP Study On The Chinese And English Word Process Of The Chinese-English Bilingual

Bilingual is who masters two or more than two languages. In our country, studying English becomes increasingly a learning task for more and more people have to be faced. Based on the comprehensively theoretical and objective studies about lexical access of Chinese and alphabetic writing system, the present research is to compare the processes of lexical access for Chinese and English words for medium skill level Chinese-English bilinguals by using ERP technique.Study 1: The role of the graphic information in the process of lexical access for Chinese and English. In experiment 1, the purpose was to investigate the intensity of brain areas'activities in different time course of 100-600ms when processing these two languages by using ERP and its source (LORETA). In experiment 2, the major aim was to compare the graphic role in processing Chinese and English words of medium skill level Chinese-English bilinguals. In this experiment, a delayed naming task was employed, while ERP were recorded by 128-channel system.Study 2: The role of the phonological information in processing Chinese and English words. In experiment 3, a priming paradigm was employed, while ERP were recorded by a 128-channel system. The major aim was to compare the phonological role in the delayed naming task. In experiment 4, it was to investigate the phonological role in semantic categorization task by using the same paradigm and technique.Study 3: The time course of graphic, phonological, and semantic information in English words processing of Chinese-English bilinguals. In experiment 5, a semantic categorization task was employed, while ERPs were recorded by a 128-channel system and behavioral data were also collected. The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the priming effect of graphic, phonological, and semantic role.Study 4: The semantic access mechanism of two languages of the medium skill level Chinese-English bilinguals. In experiment 6, a within-language and between-language repetition prime paradigm was used to investigate whether the prime effects of within-language and between-language were same, and to compare whether the between-language repetitions were different for different language order: priming effects from native language to the second language and from the second language to native language.Based on the above studies'results analysis and discussions, the present research generally discussed the different roles of graphic and phonological information during the process of Chinese and English words, the time course of graphic, phonological, and semantic information in the second language process for the medium skill level Chinese-English bilingual, and the semantic accessing mechanism of the two languages for this level bilingual. The main conclusions were drawn as follow: First, the time course and the activities of the brain areas were different for Chinese and English words, the speed of processing English words were slower than Chinese words. There were more right hemisphere brain activities for English words than Chinese words. In Chinese delay naming task, there wasn't priming effects of graphic information, whereas in English delay naming task, the priming effects of graphic was significant.Second, in Chinese delay naming task, the prime effect of phonologic was significant, whereas in English delay naming task, there wasn't priming effects. In Chinese semantic categorization task, there weren't phonologic priming effects, whereas in English semantic categorization task, the inhibiting effects of phonologic were significant.Third, the bilinguals of medium skill level were affected not only by the experiences of their native language, but also by the specialty of the second language when processed the second language. The result was that, in English semantic categorization task, the priming effects of graphic were critical significant, and the phonologic inhibiting effects were very significant. Forth, the conceptual representation and lexical representation of the second language were separate for the bilinguals of medium skill level, the lexical access of the second language was mediated by the lexical representation of the native equivalent. There were significant within-language repetition not only in native language but also in second language, the between-language repetitions were different for different language order: the priming effects from the second language to the native language were larger than from the native the second.