The impact of learning new meaning on the previously learned meaning of L2 ambiguous words: The role of semantic similarity

Abstract

Previous study has found that previously learned meaning affects the learning of new meaning for known second language (L2) words. However, it is not clear whether learning a new meaning also affects the previously learned meaning and whether this effect is modulated by the semantic similarity between them. The current study aimed to explore this issue using event-related potential technique.A word learning task was used, in which Chinese-English bilinguals were required to learn a new meaning that was semantically related or unrelated to the previously learned meaning of familiar L2 words and judge the semantic related-

Learning new meanings for known L2 words: Long‐term semantic representation is updated to integrate new information after consolidation

“…Concerning new meaning's impact on existing meaning, in our opinion it seems unlikely that the reduced access of existing meaning right after new meaning encoding in Zhang et al (2022) reflects an actual change of existing meaning's neocortical semantic representation. Otherwise, it would constitute a case of catastrophic interference (McCloskey & Cohen, 1989), i.e., existing representation getting overwritten by new information, the avoidance of which is precisely what the two complementary learning systems are for.…”

“…Compared with learning multiple meanings of an ambiguous L2 word simultaneously (Bracken et al, 2017;Lu et al, 2017), learning new meanings for known L2 words is more common in daily life. Several studies along this line have investigated how semantic relatedness/congruency between new and existing meanings affects the learning of new meaning and interference of existing meaning (Zhang et al, 2018(Zhang et al, , 2020(Zhang et al, , 2022. Zhang et al (2018) had Chinese-English bilinguals learn new meanings with different levels of relatedness to known meanings through Chinese translations for L2 known words.…”

“…congruency, consolidation, ERPs, LPC, N400, word learning by the semantic relatedness/congruency between them (Zhang et al, 2018(Zhang et al, , 2020(Zhang et al, , 2022. However, they did not consider the memory consolidation process.…”

“…Previous studies have found that when learning new meanings for known L2 words, the initial interaction between new meaning and existing meaning is modulated by the semantic relatedness/congruency between them (Zhang et al, 2018, 2020, 2022). However, they did not consider the memory consolidation process.…”

“…Results showed that learning an unrelated second meaning induced a more negative N400 than the first meaning, while learning a related second meaning produced a larger late positive component (LPC) than the first meaning. Turning to how existing meanings get affected right after new meanings encoding, Zhang et al (2022) observed larger N400 and smaller LPC for probe words related to the existing meanings of known words paired with unrelated new meanings, compared with those not paired with new meanings. Moreover, the reduction of LPC was modulated by semantic relatedness between new and existing meanings.…”