Are All Code-Switches Processed Alike? Examining Semantic v. Language Unexpectancy

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Jorge R. Valdés Kroff¹  Patricia Román²  Paola E. Dussias³ 

[1] Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Florida, United States;Department of Psychology, Universidad Loyola Andalucía;Department of Spanish, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, United States

关键词: code-switching;    semantic processing;    event-related potentials;    late positive complex;    N400;    bilingual (Spanish/English);   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02138

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Prior studies using the event-related potential (ERP) technique show that integrating sentential code-switches during online processing leads to a broadly distributed late positivity component (LPC), while processing semantically unexpected continuations instead leads to the emergence of an N400 effect. While the N400 is generally assumed to index lexico-semantic processing, the LPC has two different interpretations. One account suggests that it reflects the processing of an improbable or unexpected event, while an alternative account proposes sentence-level reanalysis. To investigate the relative costs of semantic to language-based unexpectancies (i.e., code-switches), the current study tests 24 Spanish-English bilinguals in an ERP reading study. Semantically constrained Spanish frames either varied in their semantic expectancy (high vs. low expectancy) and/or their language continuation (same-language vs. code-switch) while participants’ electrophysiological responses were recorded. The Spanish-to-English switch direction provides a more naturalistic test for integration costs to code-switching as it better approximates the code-switching practices of the target population. Analyses across three time windows show a main effect for semantic expectancy in the N400 time window and a main effect for code-switching in the LPC time window. Additional analyses based on the self-reported code-switching experience of the participants suggest an early positivity linked to less experience with code-switching. The results highlight that not all code-switches lead to similar integration costs and that prior experience with code-switching is an important additional factor that modulates online processing.

【 授权许可】

CC BY