The Characterization Of The Bilingual Lexical Semantics In The Two Hemispheres Of The Brain

Objective: To investigate the brain mechanisms of laterality and integration underlyingsemantic representation in Chinese-English bilinguals.Methods: With priming experiment under tachistoscopic visual half-field technique, fourty-eightsubjects performed the lexical decision task. The experiment was composed of two parts. In thefirst part: the target were Chinese words; in the second part: the target were English words. Theprime words and the target words were presented sequentially in the left visual field or the rightvisual field(within visual field), or one was presented in the left visual field the other waspresented in the right visual field(cross visual field).Results: (l)The results of the experiment showed priming effect in within-languageconditions(Chinese-Chinese, English-English), and also in cross-language conditions(Chinese-English, English-Chinese);(2)There weren't significant differences between left and right visual field and between left-right and right-left visual field in Chinese-Chinese language conditions. The priming effect in Chinese-Chinese was significantly larger than that in English-English in right visual field, the priming effect in Chinese-English was significantly larger than that in English-Chinese in left visual field;(3)In English-Chinese, English-English and Chinese-English language conditions, the priming effect in cross-visual-field conditions was significantly larger than that in within-visual-field conditions. In Chinese-English and English-Chinese language conditions, there was more priming effect in right-left visual field than that in right visual field;(4)When the prime words were Chinese, the target words were English, the priming effect was significantly larger than when the prime words were English, the target words were Chinese. Conclusions: (l)Chinese and English share a common semantic system;(2) The processing of Chinese is bilateral and that of English shows right hemisphere advantage;(3)In cross language conditions, two hemispheres can offer more gain effect. For cross language switch, the right hemisphere has integration advantage;(4)In Chinese-English language conditions, there is more priming effect than that in English-Chinese language conditions. This is because when the language order is Ll-L2,the connections are assumed to be conceptual, whereas when the language order is L2-Ll,the connections are assumed to be lexical.