The attribute of language-switching in Chinese-Japanese bilinguals' word recognition(Summary of Awarded Presentation at the 25th Annual Meeting)

The Japanese Psychonomic Society

NII-Electronic Library Service

The JapanesePsychonomic Society

'Ine

_Japanese

Jeurnato.fRsychonomicScience

13007,VoE,25,No.2,279-280

Summary

ofAwarded

PresentationIP44

The

attribute

of

in

Chinese-Japanese

bi

language-switching

linguals'

word

recognition

HuiShuJiN

and

Kazuhiko

YoKosAwA

The

U'niversit.v

of

Tokyo*

Two

monolingual lexicaldecisiontasks and a cued language-switching task were uscd to

explore thecognitive _processingof two-Chinese-character compound words in_proficient

Chinese-Japanese

bilinguals,

The

results showed one-way lacilitationand

inhibition

from

Ll

toL2 when

billnguals_performed lexicaldecision tasksinboth languages. respectively, Interactive

interfer-ence and facilitationwere observed

in

when sporadic language-switching isrequired.

Key

words:

Chinese-Japanese

bilinguals,language-switching, language set

Bilingualscan switch from one language to the

other indailyconversation without

hesitation.

How dothey control their

both

languages? According to

Green

(1998),

it

is

the language schema

{or

language

set) which regulates the output from _theword

recog-nition system by altering the activation levelsof

representations. Ifa language schema isincharge of

languagc activation, then will manipulating the

lev-els of language schema activation influence

bilin-guals'language processing?

This

is

one of the

ques-tionswe explored inthe_present study.

Another question that we examined

in

thisstudy

i$

whether

bilinguaL

lexical

access is

language-selective. There might be an inLeractionbetween

lexical

processing inboth languages,especially when

the two languages share most _parts of a common

writing system, such as

Chinese

and

Japanese.

Al-though

Chinese

and Japanese belong to different

linguistic

families,

and differ_greatly in _grarnmar,

both

languages use

Chinese

characters

(Kanji)

in

morphological representations.

There

are many

words that are identical

in

the

Chincse

and

Japanese

]anguage

at

both

graphemic and scmantic Ievels

(cognates).

How wM thesimilarity inmorphological repre$entations affect cognitive _processing

by

Chi-nese-Japanese bilinguals? In _{the present} study we

examined

bilinguals'

language switching in

Chinesc

* _{Department of Psychology, Graduate}

_School

_of

Humanities and

Seciology.

The

University

of

Tokyo, 7-3Ll Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo

O033

and

_Japanese,

focusing on

the

comprchension of visually _presented words,

Method

Stimuli and Tasks

Four

types of

two-Chinese-character

(Kanji)

compound words were used as

stimuli:

(1)

words that are idcntical

in

Chinese

and

Japanese

at both _graphemic and sernantic levels

(cog-natcs);

(2)

words specific to

Japanese

which do not

have semantic meaning inChinese

(Japanese

words);

(3)

words specific to

Chinese,

which

do

not

have

meaning in

Japanese

(Chinese

words);

(4)

non-words

ineither language

(pseudo-word$),

There were 25

stimuli of each type.Allof thesingle Chinese

charac-ters

(Kanji)

that appeared ineach compound word

had

the same morpheme inboth Chinese and

Japa-nese. The frequency and

familiarity

of stimuli were strictly contro]led.

Two

monoLingual, lexicaldccision tasks

(one

in

Japanese

and _the other

in

Chinese),

and a cued

lan-guage-swiLching task,were conductcd, In

the

mone-ltngual

lexical

decision tasks,a total of 100 stimulL

were _presented in white at the center of a

black

computer screen background.

The

cued language-switching task had 200 trials,with 100 stimuli pre-$ented twice, one time

in

agreen coler, the other ina red celor. The color of

the

stimuli toldthe

partici-pant inwhich Ianguage _the

lexical

_decisionshould

bemade, depending on the

instructions,

Participants

The

participants were 18 native

speakers of Chinese with an advanced

level

of

The Japanese Psychonomic Society

NII-Electronic Library Service

The JapanesePsychonomic Society

280

The

Japanese

Journal

of

Psychonomic

Science

Vol.

25,

No.

2

Tab]e

Mean

Response

Times

(in

milliseconds) of 3 tasks.

cognates; "JVkr":

Japanese

words)

1{"PSE":

pseudo-words; "CW": Chinese words; "C'':

Monolingual Lexical

Decision

Tasks

Cued

Language-Switching

Task

Japanese

Task

Chinese

Task

Japanese

trials

Chinese

trials Bilinguals

ChineseJapanese

PSE CWCJWPSE

JWccwPSE

CWcJWPSE

JWCCW

746 722 624 662 735 762 607 622666

682

587

901

839

669596719755

869 755 825

808

895

723

761745

906

730

781

851

923

731 782

nese Emd I4 native speakers of

Japanesc

with an

intermediate levelof

Chinese.

Results

and

Discussion

Thc

reaction times of correct responses

for

the

word conditions and the non-word conditions were

analyzed separately using t-tests. The mean

re-sponse times are shown intable1.

The

responses to word conditions inmonolingual

tasks are

discussed

first,

The

cognates were

proc-essed significantly

faster

than those words specific to

L2

_[Chinese

bilinguals,t(17}=3.08,

_P<.Ol;

Japanese

bilinguals,

t(,11)=2.60,P<.05].

The

resu!ts

indicated

a one-way

facilitation

effect

from

Ll

to

L2.

An

opposite

facilitation

or

inhibition

effect

from

L2

to Ll was not revcaled, This result indicatesthat

bi]in-guals can effectively activate the conceptual

repre-sentation via

both

Chinese

and

Japanese

ertho-graphic rcpresentations, facilitatingtheIexical proc-essing inL2, However, their_processing inLl was not affected by the L2 lexicalstatus. Regarding the responses to non-words, _{pseuclo-words} were much

harder

to reject as non-werds when

bilinguals

per-forrned

the

lexical

deeision

task

in

L2

compared to

Ll

_[Japanese

bilinguals,t(11)=3.12,P<.Ol].

Moreo-vcr,

Chinesc

bilingualswere affected by L2 lexical

status as

indicated

bv

thecorrectness of their lexical

'

decisions. Itsuggests that

lexical

candidates

from

the task-irrelevantlanguage are activated, which

in-dicatesthat lexicalacce$s isnot language-sclective,

With

respect tothecued

language-swit.ching

task,

interactive

interierence

and facilitationwere

re-vealed

between

the

billnguals'

two languages, not enly

frorn

L1

to

L2,

but

also

in

theopposite

direction,

Cognates wcre processed significantly fasterthan

words specific toone

language

[Chinese

bilinguals,

t{]7)=4.55,

_P<.Ol;

_Japanese

bilinguals,t(10)=2.42,

P<.05].

Slower

responses and more errors were

made to non-words specific to the current

task-relevant language than to

_pseudo-words

_[Chinese

bilinguals,t(17)==5.06,

P<.Ol;

Japanese

bilinguals,

t{10}=4.66,

_p<,Ol].

Since

cognates

have

identical

orthographic and semantic representations

in

both

languages, they were simultaneously activated via

both Chinese and

Japanesc,

resulting infaster

re-sponses.

However, slower responses to language-specific

word$ could also be interpretedas thcresult of

inhi-bition

from

the task-irrelevantlanguage. For

exam-ple,

Chinese

words are non-words in

Japanese,

and a

"No"

response

based

upon

Japanese

is

correct.

This

"No"

response from

Japanese

isaccompanied even if

in

Chinese

lexical

decisions

where

Japanese

is

not

the

task-relevant

language.

In

contrast, responses to

cognate$ are always "Yes"

in

both

languages,

result-inginfaster_processing. Furthermore, the

simultane-ous activation of two languages also strongly

inter-feredwith responses tonon-words. When a bilingual

was making a

lexical

decision

in

one

language,

words specific totheother

language

were also activated at

the same time. Consequently, an inhibitorycontrol

of the non-response language would be needed,

which resulted

in

a slewcr rcsponse when the non-words were words specific totheother

language,

Reference

Green, D.W. 1998 Mental control of the bilingual

lexico-semantic system. Bitingualism] Language

and

Cog?zition,

1,67-81,