An ERPs Study Of The Code-switching Effects In Proficient Chinese-English Bilinguals' Lexical Processing

Bilingual language switching,code-switching in particular,is one of the focuses of psycholinguistics academic research.Researchers mainly investigate code-switching from the perspective of language production and language comprehension through behavioral methods and cognitive neuroscience techniques.However,among the studies of code-switching in language comprehension,researchers of overseas usually adopt ERPs or fMRI techniques to explore code-switching effects between two or more alphabetic languages belonging to same language family,while studies of code-switching effects between Chinese and English are scarce.Researchers of domestic mainly use behavioral measures to investigate code-switching costs in Chinese-English bilinguals,whose two language proficiency levels are different,in the field of psychology,cognitive psychology,psycholinguistics,etc.,and they are concentrated on the influence of factors such as language proficiency,orthographic feature,as well as response features on code-switching costs,few studies employ ERPs technique to explore code-switching effects of proficient Chinese-English bilinguals in the field of linguistics In view of this,the current study aims to investigate code-switching effects in proficient Chinese-English bilinguals' lexical comprehension by adopting ERPs technique.The following question is discussed:Do code-switching effects occur in proficient Chinese-English bilinguals' lexical processing?The present study adopted a 3(language priming mode: non-priming,Chinese priming and English priming)× 2(picture-word matching: picture-English matching,picture-Chinese matching)within subject factorial design,and the whole study consists of three parts: the non-priming secession,Chinese priming secession,as well as the English priming secession.The whole experiment recruits 17 postgraduates who are majored in English from SISU(Sichuan International Studies University),adopting picture-word matching task,taking the picture-word pairs under three priming modes astarget stimuli to investigate code-switching.In the non-priming secession,the participants were required to make judgments on the randomly appeared picture-word pairs.The procedures of Chinese priming session and English priming session are the same: the priming words were presented first,after which participants were asked to make judgments on the target pairs of picture-word.The dependent factor are the reaction time results and ERPs data.The experimental procedure was programmed by the software E-Prime 2.0,and the experimental data were collected and recorded by the software Neuroscan4.5 and Synaps2 and then calculated off-line by using the statistic software SPSS 19.0.The whole experiments were conducted in the Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Foreign Language Learning in SISU.The research findings are as follows:(1)According to the behavioral data,in the processing of picture-English matching under three different priming modes,there was only a difference between NPEM and EPEM(p =.027 <.05),participants responded more faster in NPEM than in EPEM.And no difference was found among NPEM,CPEM and EPEM in accuracy rate(ps >.05).In the processing of picture-Chinese matching under three different priming modes,there was only a marginally difference between NPCM and EPCM(p =.076),participants responded a little bit faster in NPCM than in EPCM.No difference was discovered among NPCM,CPCM and EPCM in accuracy rate(ps >.05)either.These results reveal that code-switching effects do occur in proficient Chinese-English bilinguals' lexical processing,but the effect is influenced by language switching direction.Besides,as an indicator for code-switching effects,the sensitivity of accuracy rate is surpassed by reaction time.(2)As for the ERPs data,the processing of NPEM,CPEM and EPEM all elicited N100,N200 and N400 component.Specifically speaking,the processing of CPEM evoked a larger N100 and N200 amplitude than EPEM(ps <.05),while no difference was revealed in the N400 component.The processing of NPCM,CPCM and EPCM also all elicited N100,N200 and N400 component.To be specific,the processing of NPCMevoked a larger N200 and N400 amplitude than CPCM and EPCM(ps <.05),while no difference was found between CPCM and EPCM(p >.05)in the N200 and N400 amplitude.In addition,the processing of NPCM,CPCM and EPCM showed no difference in the N100 component.These results suggest that language switching direction influences code-switching pattern and its effects in proficient Chinese-English bilinguals' lexical processing to a great extent.In general,code-switching effects occur in proficient Chinese-English bilinguals' lexical processing,and language switching direction has a great influence on the code-switching pattern and its effects.