Electrophysiology of cross-language interference and facilitation in picture naming

Abstract

Disagreement exists about how bilingual speakers select words, in particular, whether words in another language compete, or competition is restricted to a target language, or no competition occurs. Evidence that competition occurs but is restricted to a target language comes from response time (RT) effects obtained when speakers name pictures in one language while trying to ignore distractor words in another language. Compared to unrelated distractor words, RT is longer when the picture name and distractor are semantically related, but RT is shorter when the distractor is the translation of the name of the picture in the other language. These effects suggest that distractor words from another language do not compete themselves but activate their counterparts in the target language, thereby yielding the semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Here, we report an event-related brain potential (ERP) study testing the prediction that priming underlies both of these effects.The RTs showed semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Moreover, the picture-word stimuli yielded an N400 response, whose amplitude was smaller on semantic and translation trials than on unrelated trials, providing evidence that interference and facilitation priming underlie the RT effects. We present the results of computer simulations showing the utility of a within-language competition account of our findings.

Control adjustments in speaking: Electrophysiology of the Gratton effect in picture naming

“…In a previous modeling study, Van Maanen et al (2009) did not predict differences in the locus of the semantic and Stroop-like effects in PWI, and treated congruent and neutral trials as instances of a single control condition. Moreover, in previous electrophysiological studies (Piai, Roelofs, Jensen, et al, 2014;Roelofs et al, 2016), the Stroop-like effect and the semantic effect were both reflected in the N400: There was a difference in N400 amplitude between incongruent and neutral trials (the semantic effect), and an even larger difference between congruent and incongruent trials (the Stroop-like effect). Thus, if the functional locus of the semantic effect is different between post-congruent and postincongruent trials, as Van Maanen and Van Rijn claim, then this should also hold for the Stroop-like effect.…”

“…For the Stroop task (in various adaptations), a prominent negative-going deflection at approximately 400e450 msec post-stimulus onset, an N400 component, is typically larger on incongruent than on congruent trials (Hanslmayr et al, 2008;Liotti, Woldorff, Perez, & Mayberg, 2000). Some of these previous studies referred to this component as an "N450", but we take it to be an N400 (see Piai, Roelofs, Jensen, Schoffelen, & Bonnefond, 2014;Piai, Roelofs, & Van der Meij, 2012;Roelofs, Piai, Garrido Rodriguez, & Chwilla, 2016;Shitova et al, 2016). Contrary to the N2 effect in the Eriksen flanker task, the N400 effect has not been consistently shown to follow the Gratton pattern of control adjustments in the Stroop task.…”

Distinguishing languages from dialects: A litmus test using the picture-word interference task

“…Translation-equivalent facilitation is a robust finding that has been observed for highly related languages (Spanish-Catalan) as well as more dissimilar languages (e.g., Spanish -English, English -Dutch), when naming in L1, L2 and in a mixed naming context, and it has also been shown for more balanced bilinguals and nonbalanced bilinguals Hermans, 2004;Roelofs, Piai, Rodriguez, & Chwilla, 2016). In the current Experiment 4, we asked participants to name pictures in their dispreferred dialect, D2, but failed to observe the translation-equivalent interference effect or the between-dialect semantic interference effect that we'd observed in our other experiments.…”

Electrophysiological characterization of facilitation and interference in the picture‐word interference paradigm

“…A major aim of contemporary psycholinguistic research is to understand and model the cognitive processes that speakers use to produce words. A very popular tool to investigate these processes and their time course is the picture‐word interference paradigm (e.g., Briggs & Underwood, ; Lupker, ; Rayner & Posnansky, , for early studies; see Bölte, Dohmes, & Zwitserlood, ; Bürki, Sadat, Dubarry, & Alario, ; Damian & Spalek, ; Porcaro, Medaglia, & Krott, ; Roelofs & Piai, ; Roelofs, Piai, Garrido Rodriguez, & Chwilla, , for more recent work). In this paradigm, participants are asked to name a picture and to ignore a distractor, presented either in the auditory or in the visual modality.…”

“…Their naming latencies (i.e., time interval between the onset of picture presentation and the onset of the vocal response) and EEG were recorded during the task. The present study is not the first to combine the picture-word interference paradigm with the monitoring of EEG Dell'Acqua et al, 2010;Roelofs et al, 2015;Zhu, Damian, & Zhang, 2015), but is the first to do so with a combination of state-of-the-art analyses of the EEG signal. Mass univariate analyses with cluster permutation tests (e.g., Pernet, Chauveau, Gaspar, & Rousselet, 2011) are used to define the time course of differences between conditions.…”