语言可以影响与时间处理不同的领域的认知,空间分类,和颜色感知(Casasanto&Boroditsky,2008;莱文森和威尔金斯,2006;Winawer等人。,2007).这里,我们提供了融合的行为和神经证据,表明双语经验可以改变语义关联。在实验1中,讲西班牙语和英语的双语者对语义无关的图片对进行了评级(例如,云呈现)在含义上比英语单语更相关。实验2表明,精通西班牙语和英语的双语者在语义上都相关(例如,学生-教师)和不相关的图片对(例如,wall-fruit)比单语者和低熟练度双语者更相关。实验3增加了ERP措施,以提供对语义等级的双语效果更敏感的测试,通过使用语言刺激(相关和无关的单词而不是图片)和不同的双语人群(韩语-英语双语者)进行评估。双语与显著较小的N400效应(即,不相关的N400),这表明双语者对相关和不相关的对的处理比单语言者更相似;这一结果与双语者认为不相关的单词比单语言者更相关的行为趋势无关。在这三个实验中,结果表明,双语体验可以影响感知的语义关联。我们建议双语者更密集,更相互联系的语音,正字法和词汇系统可能会改变语义概念之间的联系。这样的说明与语言的连接主义模型一致,该模型允许语音和词汇对概念表示的影响,对双语语言处理模型的影响。
Language can influence cognition in domains as varied as temporal processing, spatial categorization, and color perception (Casasanto & Boroditsky, 2008; Levinson & Wilkins, 2006; Winawer et al., 2007). Here, we provide converging behavioral and neural evidence that bilingual experience can change semantic associations. In Experiment 1, Spanish- and English-speaking bilinguals rated semantically unrelated picture pairs (e.g., cloud-present) as significantly more related in meaning than English monolinguals. Experiment 2 demonstrated that bilinguals who were highly proficient in Spanish and English rated both semantically related (e.g., student-teacher) and unrelated picture pairs (e.g., wall-fruit) as more related than monolinguals and low-proficiency bilinguals. Experiment 3 added ERP measures to provide a more sensitive test of the bilingual effect on semantic ratings, which was assessed through the use of linguistic stimuli (related and unrelated words instead of pictures) and a different bilingual population (Korean-English bilinguals). Bilingualism was associated with a significantly smaller N400 effect (i.e., N400 for unrelated - related), suggesting that bilinguals processed related and unrelated pairs more similarly than monolinguals; this result was coupled with a non-significant behavioral trend of bilinguals judging unrelated words as more related than monolinguals did. Across the three experiments, results show that bilingual experience can influence perceived semantic associations. We propose that bilinguals\' denser and more interconnected phonological, orthographic and lexical systems may change the links between semantic concepts. Such an account is consistent with connectionist models of language that allow for phonological and lexical influences on conceptual representations, with implications for models of bilingual language processing.