A Comparison of Turkish-English Bilinguals’ Processing of Emotion Words in Their Two Languages

Mergen, Filiz; Kuruoğlu, Gülmira

doi:10.32601/ejal.460969

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Nişancı (2017) illustrated the role of extensive reading in promoting high school EFL learners’ implicit phonological knowledge and improving their word recognition fluency at large. Adopting a bilingual approach, Mergen and Kuruoğlu (2018) compared the lexical processing of Turkish-English bilinguals in both languages. The results coming from the lexical decision task that included letter strings of real and non-words revealed that Turkish-English bilinguals, who learned both languages from birth, responded faster and more accurately to real words than non-words both in Turkish and English.…”

Section: Classroom Processes and Instructional Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applied linguistics and language education research in Turkey: 2016–2022

Hart

Aydınlı²

2023

Lang. Teach.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This systematic review of 170+ journal articles showcases the current trends and developments in Turkey-based applied linguistics and language education research between 2016–2022. The current review presents similarities to the previous reviews (Alptekin & Tatar, 2011; Aydınlı & Ortaçtepe, 2018) in terms of trends and practices that indicate a vibrant research scene and a community of practice in Turkey within language education and applied linguistics research. While certain research areas such as instructional technologies remain widely popular among Turkey-based scholars, there has been growing interest in multiculturalism, social justice language education, critical pedagogy, and culturally responsive teaching. It was also clear in our analysis that the demands by the Higher Education Council for academic promotion exacerbated some of the already-existing challenges also noted in the previous reviews. Some of the concerns include pre- and post-test study designs that focus on practical concerns and outcomes rather than on processes that would lead to conceptual or theoretical development; and lack of engagement with broader (inter)disciplinary debates. We hope that this review will help establish conversations among fellow scholars in terms of future directions that applied linguistics and language education research in Turkey can take in order to contribute to the larger discussions in the field.

show abstract

Section: Classroom Processes and Instructional Practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applied linguistics and language education research in Turkey: 2016–2022

Hart

Aydınlı²

2023

Lang. Teach.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, Sianipar, Middelburg and Dijkstra's (2015) longitudinal study with German-Dutch bilinguals found results supporting the privileged status of positive words in the participants' second language. Mergen and Kuruoglu (2017), employed a lexical decision task in a visual hemi-field paradigm, and reported that simultaneous bilinguals processed positive words faster than negative and neutral words in both languages. In another lexical decision task study, Ferre, Anglada-Tort and Guash (2018) reported faster response times for positive, but not for negative words for highly proficient bilinguals.…”

Section: Emotion Word Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The stimuli were taken from a previous study on emotion word processing in simultaneous bilinguals (Mergen & Kuruoglu 2017). We used two sets of words.…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Lateralization of emotion word in the first and second language: Evidence from Turkish-English bilinguals

Mergen

Kuruoğlu

2023

Russian Journal of Linguistics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As interest in cognitive sciences has grown over the years, language representation in the brain has increasingly become the subject of psycholinguistic studies. In contrast to the relatively clear picture in monolingual language processing, there is still much controversy over bilinguals’ processing of their two languages. The goal of this paper is therefore to provide more evidence on the way emotion words are processed and represented in the brain in late bilinguals. The study seeks to answer three questions: 1. Are positive words processed faster than negative and neutral words in both languages of bilinguals? 2. Is there a difference in the speed in which emotion words are processed in the first (L1) and second language (L2) of bilinguals? 3. How are emotion words represented in the bilingual brain? Participants were late Turkish-English bilinguals (N = 57). We used a visual hemi-field paradigm, in which the stimuli were presented either on the right or left of a computer screen. By pressing the designated keys, the participants performed a lexical decision task in which they determined whether the visually presented L1 and L2 words were real words or non-words. The first result showed that positive words are processed faster than negative and neutral words in both languages of bilinguals, providing further support for the differential processing of emotion words. Second, longer response times were found for L2 as compared to L1. Finally, we found bilateral hemispheric representation for both English and Turkish. These results contribute to the psycholinguistic literature by providing evidence from the relatively understudied language pairs such as English and Turkish.

show abstract

“…However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, there are very few studies that investigated Turkish language from a psycholinguistic perspective, which is spoken as a native language and being learned as a foreign / second language by millions of people today. The existing literature generally focuses on language pathology (Sadiyeva, 2004;Maviş & Özbabalık, 2006;Toğram, Çıkan & Duru, 2013;Ulusoy & Kuruoğlu, 2013), language learning and acquisition (Haznedar, 2007;Dolgunsöz & Sarıçoban, 2016;Tok & Yıgın, 2013;Sarıca, 2014;Özge, Marinis & Zeyrek, 2015) and bilingualism (Belet, 2009;Çeltek, 2014;Mergen & Kuruoğlu, 2016;2017). This study aimed to fi ll this gap in the literature by investigating lexical processing in Turkish, how emotional workload affect lexical processing of Turkish words and their hemispheric organization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hemispheric Organization of Visual Word Recognition in Turkish Monolinguals

Mergen¹,

Kuruoğlu

2019

Psycholing.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recently obtained data from interdisciplinary research has expanded our knowledge on the relationship between language and the brain considerably. Numerous aspects of language have been the subject of research. Visual word recognition is a temporal process which starts with recognizing the physical features of words and matching them with potential candidates in the mental lexicon. Word frequency plays a significant role in this process. Other factors are the similarities in spelling and pronunciation, and whether words have meanings or are simply letter strings. The emotional load of the words is another factor that deserves a closer inspection as an overwhelming amount of evidence supports the privileged status of emotions both in verbal and nonverbal tasks. It is well-established that lexical processing is handled by the involvement of the brain hemispheres to varying degrees, and that the left hemisphere has greater involvement in verbal tasks as compared to the right hemisphere. Also, the emotional load of the verbal stimuli affects the specialized roles of the brain hemispheres in lexical processing. Despite the abundance of research on processing of words that belong to languages from a variety of language families, the number of studies that investigated Turkish, a language of Uralic-Altaic origin, is scarce. This study aims to fill the gap in the literature by reporting evidence on how Turkish words with and without emotional load are processed and represented in the brain. We employed a visual hemifield paradigm and a lexical decision task. The participants were instructed to decide if the letter strings presented either from the right or the left of the computer screen were real words or non-words. Their response times and accuracy of their answers were recorded. We obtained shorter response times and higher accuracy rates for real words than non-words as reported in the majority of studies in the literature. We also found that the emotional load modulated the recognition of words, supporting the results in the literature. Finally, our results are in line with the view of left hemispheric superiority in lexical processing in monolingual speakers.

show abstract

A Comparison of Turkish-English Bilinguals’ Processing of Emotion Words in Their Two Languages

Cited by 6 publications

References 36 publications

Applied linguistics and language education research in Turkey: 2016–2022

Applied linguistics and language education research in Turkey: 2016–2022

Lateralization of emotion word in the first and second language: Evidence from Turkish-English bilinguals

Hemispheric Organization of Visual Word Recognition in Turkish Monolinguals

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About