The fox and the cabra: An ERP analysis of reading code switched nouns and verbs in bilingual short stories

Abstract

Comprehending a language (or code) switch within a sentence context triggers 2 electrophysiological signatures: an early left anterior negativity post code switch onset – a LAN – followed by a Late Positive Component (LPC). Word class and word position modulate lexico-semantic processes in the monolingual brain, e.g., larger N400 amplitude for nouns than verbs and for earlier than later words in the sentence. Here we test whether the bilingual brain is affected by word class and word position when code switching, or if the cost of switching overrides these lexico-semantic and sentence context factors. Adult bilinguals read short stories in English containing 8 target words. Targets were nouns or verbs, occurred early or late in a story and were presented alternately in English (non-switch) or Spanish (switch) across different story versions. Overall, switched words elicited larger LAN and LPC amplitude than nonswitched words. The N400 amplitude was larger for nouns than verbs, more focal for switches than non-switches, and for early than late nouns but not for early than late verbs. Moreover, an early LPC effect was observed only for switched nouns, but not verbs. Together, this indicates that referential elements (nouns) may be harder to process and integrate than relational elements (verbs) in discourse, and when switched, nouns incur higher integration cost. Word position did not modulate the code switching effects, implying that switching between languages may invoke discourse independent processes.

Switching direction affects switching costs: Behavioral, ERP and time-frequency analyses of intra-sentential codeswitching

“…These insertions do not reflect the common pattern of codeswitching among Spanish-English bilinguals in the U.S. (Poplack, 1980). In the present study, we will extend previous electrophysiological studies that tested one-word insertional codeswitches (Moreno et al, 2002;Ng et al, 2014;Proverbio et al, 2004;Van der Meij et al, 2011) by examining alternational codeswitching in sentences that start in one language and then continue in the other language.…”

“…In contrast to the multitude of language switching studies, less psycholinguistic and neurocognitive research has focused on the processing of switching languages within the context of meaningful utterances, such as sentences (see Van Hell, Litcofsky, & Ting, 2015, for a review), and even fewer studies examined neurocognitive processes associated with intrasentential codeswitching (Moreno, Federmeier, & Kutas, 2002;Ng, Gonzalez, & Wicha, 2014;Proverbio, Leoni, & Zani, 2004;Van der Meij, Cuetos, Carreiras, & Barber, 2011). Next we will discuss switching in these more meaningful sentence contexts.…”

“…A recent study by Ng et al (2014) examined the processing of codeswitches in a larger discourse context. Balanced Spanish-English bilinguals read short stories in English that either contained codeswitched words in Spanish or remained entirely in English.…”

Are all code-switches processed the same? Examining semantic v. language unexpectancy

“…Moreover, we report a broadly distributed and extended LPC for the code-switched conditions. The LPC has now been documented in several studies on code-switching (e.g., Beatty-Martínez and Dussias 2017;Fernández et al 2019;Moreno et al 2002;2008;Litcofsky and Van Hell 2017;Ng et al 2014). While Moreno et al initially interpreted this component as reflective of processing an improbable or unexpected event, Van Hell and colleagues have suggested that it instead points toward sentence-level reanalysis.…”

“…After visual inspection of the epochs, and following prior studies on the processing of code-switches (Moreno et al 2002;Proverbio, Leoni and Zani 2004;Ng et al 2014), three time windows within the epochs were selected for further analyses. The time windows targeted the left anterior negativity (LAN, between 250-350ms after the target display), the N400 (350-450ms) and the LPC (500-700ms).…”