Language Presentation And Language Switching Effects Of Less Proficient Chinese-English Bilinguals: An ERPs Study

In the fields of bilingual cognitive study, the central focus is the pattern of language representation and language switching. ERPs was used to examine the processing of second language of the less proficient Chinese-English Bilinguals.In the first experiment, presenting the stimulus visually, with N2 and N400 as the index, measured the within- and between-Language priming effects and language switching cost. The results showed that the priming effect of within- language repeat was not reliable between Ll(the first language) and L2(the sencond language), but the priming effect of between- language repeat was significantly different between two languages, the priming effect of L2-L1 repeat was significant bigger than L1-L2 repeat; For L1, the amplitude of N400 elicited by non-switch trials is more negative than switch trials. For L2, the amplitude of N2 elicited by non-switch trials was more negative than switch trials.In the second experiment, presenting the stimulus auditorily, the within-priming effect and between- priming effect were the same with the results of the first experiment; for the language switching effect, non-switch trails was also more negative than switch trails, but only significant for L1.The results proved that both in the visual condition and auditory condition, the within priming effect was equivalent for English and Chinese. Within repetition priming maybe occurr at lexical level, within- and between- language repetition priming are mediated by different mechanisms; For the less proficient Chinese-English bilinguals, it is necessary to refer to the first language's lexical representation as mediation when access the semantic representation of L2, which support the RHM to some extent; the language switching cost is absent during switching between Chinese and English.