The time has come, perhaps, to go beyond merely acknowledging that language is a core manifestation of the workings of the human mind and that it relates interactively to all aspects of thinking. The ...issue, thus, is not to decide whether language and human thought may be ineluctably linked (they just are), but rather to determine what the characteristics of this relationship may be and to understand how language influences—and may be influenced by—nonverbal information processing. In an attempt to demystify linguistic relativity, I review neurolinguistic studies from our research group showing a link between linguistic distinctions and perceptual or conceptual processing. On the basis of empirical evidence showing effects of terminology on perception, language‐idiosyncratic relationships in semantic memory, grammatical skewing of event conceptualization, and unconscious modulation of executive functioning by verbal input, I advocate a neurofunctional approach through which we can systematically explore how languages shape human thought.
Bilingual individuals have been shown to access their native language while reading in or listening to their other language. However, it is unknown what type of mental representation (e.g., sound or ...spelling) they retrieve. Here, using event-related brain potentials, we demonstrate unconscious access to the sound form of Chinese words when advanced Chinese-English bilinguals read or listen to English words. Participants were asked to decide whether or not English words presented in pairs were related in meaning; they were unaware of the fact that some of the unrelated word pairs concealed either a sound or a spelling repetition in their Chinese translations. Whereas spelling repetition in Chinese translations had no effect, concealed sound repetition significantly modulated event-related brain potentials. These results suggest that processing second language activates the sound, but not the spelling, of native language translations.
Mastering two languages has been associated with enhancement in human executive control, but previous studies of this phenomenon have exclusively relied on comparisons between bilingual and ...monolingual individuals. In the present study, we tested a single group of Welsh-English bilinguals engaged in a nonverbal conflict resolution task and manipulated language context by intermittently presenting words in Welsh, English, or both languages. Surprisingly, participants showed enhanced executive capacity to resolve interference when exposed to a mixed compared with a single language context, even though they ignored the irrelevant contextual words. This result was supported by greater response accuracy and reduced amplitude of the P300, an electrophysiological correlate of cognitive interference. Our findings introduce a new level of plasticity in bilingual executive control dependent on fast changing language context rather than long-term language experience.
•Polish-English bilinguals engaged in a cyclic version of the alternative uses Task.•Right posterior alpha power increased over cycles, paralleling idea originality.•Lower alpha power (8–10 Hz) ...increased in Polish as compared with English.•Unexpectedly, beta power (16.5–28 Hz) decreased in English relative to Polish.•Our results suggest reduced cognitive interference during second language ideation.
Tasks measuring human creativity overwhelmingly rely on both language comprehension and production. Although most of the world's population is bilingual, few studies have investigated the effects of language of operation on creative output. This is surprising given that fluent bilinguals master inhibitory control, a mechanism also at play in creative idea evaluation. Here, we compared creative output in the two languages of Polish(L1)-English(L2) bilinguals engaged in a cyclic adaptation of the Alternative Uses Task increasing the contribution of idea evaluation (convergent thinking). We show that Polish-English bilinguals suffer less cognitive interference when generating unusual uses for common objects in the L2 than the L1, without incurring a significant drop in idea originality. Right posterior alpha oscillation power, known to reflect creative thinking, increased over cycles. This effect paralleled the increase in originality ratings over cycles, and lower alpha power (8–10 Hz) was significantly greater in the L1 than the L2. Unexpectedly, we found greater beta (16.5–28 Hz) desynchronization in the L2 than the L1, suggesting that bilingual participants suffered less interference from competing mental representations when performing the task in the L2. Whereas creative output seems unaffected by language of operation overall, the drop in beta power in the L2 suggests that bilinguals are not subjected to the same level of semantic flooding in the second language as they naturally experience in their native language.
Whether the native language of bilingual individuals is active during second-language comprehension is the subject of lively debate. Studies of bilingualism have often used a mix of first- and ...second-language words, thereby creating an artificial "dual-language" context. Here, using event-related brain potentials, we demonstrate implicit access to the first language when bilinguals read words exclusively in their second language. Chinese-English bilinguals were required to decide whether English words presented in pairs were related in meaning or not; they were unaware of the fact that half of the words concealed a character repetition when translated into Chinese. Whereas the hidden factor failed to affect behavioral performance, it significantly modulated brain potentials in the expected direction, establishing that English words were automatically and unconsciously translated into Chinese. Critically, the same modulation was found in Chinese monolinguals reading the same words in Chinese, i.e., when Chinese character repetition was evident. Finally, we replicated this pattern of results in the auditory modality by using a listening comprehension task. These findings demonstrate that native-language activation is an unconscious correlate of second-language comprehension.
Abstract Previous research has demonstrated that cross-language activation is present even when proficient bilinguals perform a task only in one language. The present study investigated the ...time-course of cross-language activation during word production in a second language (L2) by using a picture–word interference paradigm with event-related potentials (ERPs). Spanish–English bilinguals living in an L2 environment named pictures in their L2 English while ignoring L2 English distractor words that were visually presented with the pictures. Participants named pictures more slowly when distractors were semantically related or phonologically related to either the English name of the picture or the Spanish name of the picture than when picture and distractor word were unrelated. Interference was also detectable in the mean amplitude of the N2 peak (200–260 ms) and the N3 range (350–400 ms). The results suggest that lexical alternatives from both languages compete for selection in the process of L2 speech planning in a predominantly L2 context.
In a non‐randomized controlled study, we investigated the efficacy of a school‐based mindfulness curriculum delivered by schoolteachers to older secondary school students (16–18 years). We measured ...changes in emotion processing indexed by P3b event‐related potential (ERP) modulations in an affective oddball task using static human faces. ERPs were recorded to happy and sad face oddballs presented in a stimulus stream of frequent faces with neutral expression, before and after 8 weeks of mindfulness training. Whilst the mean amplitude of the P3b, an ERP component typically elicited by infrequent oddballs, decreased between testing sessions in the control group, it remained unchanged in the training group. Significant increases in self‐reported well‐being and fewer doctor visits for mental health support were also reported in the training group as compared to controls. The observed habituation to emotional stimuli in controls thus contrasted with maintained sensitivity in mindfulness‐trained students. These results suggest that in‐school mindfulness training for adolescents has scope for increasing awareness of socially relevant emotional stimuli, irrespective of valence, and thus may decrease vulnerability to depression.
This non‐randomised controlled study examined changes in P3b brain potentials of 16‐18 year olds from before to after an 8‐week mindfulness programme. Mindfulness training resulted in maintained P3b amplitudes to sad, happy and neutral faces in the training group only, indicating sustained sensitivity to socially relevant stimuli.
Thirty patients, with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML, n = 20) or myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS, n = 10), were enrolled in a phase II trial entailing prophylactic post-transplant azacitidine ...(AZA) plus escalated doses of donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI). The median number of AZA cycles was 5 (1-12) with 10 patients (33%) completing the 12 projected cycles. DLI were performed in 17 patients: 5 received one DLI, 2 received 2 DLI and 8 received 3 infusions. AZA was well tolerated, but discontinued in 20 patients primarily due to graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) and relapse. The cumulative incidence (CI) of grade 1-3 acute GvHD was 31.5% and the chronic GvHD CI was 53% at 2 years. At a median follow-up of 49 months (27-63), 18 patients are alive. The overall and disease-free survivals are 65.5% (CI 95% = 48.2-82.8) at 2 years. Cause of death was mainly relapse for 9 patients. The median time to relapse was 7 months (2.5-58) and the cumulative incidence of relapse at 2 years was 27.6% (CI 95% = 12.8-44.6). These results confirm that AZA is well tolerated as a prophylactic treatment to reduce the risk of post-transplantation relapse and compared favorably to those of patients who receive no post-transplant maintenance.
Chinese learners of English often experience difficulty with English tense presumably because their native language is tenseless. We showed that this difficulty relates to their incomplete conceptual ...representations for tense rather than their poor grammatical rule knowledge. Participants made acceptability judgments on sentences describing two‐event sequences that were either temporally plausible or misaligned according to verb tense (time clash). Both upper‐intermediate Chinese learners of English and native English speakers were able to detect time clashes between events, showing that Chinese participants could apply tense rules explicitly. However, a predicted modulation of the N400 event‐related brain potential elicited by time clashes in English‐speaking participants was entirely absent in Chinese participants. In contrast, the same Chinese participants could semantically process time information when it was lexically conveyed in both languages. Thus, despite their mastery of English grammar, high‐functioning Chinese learners of English failed to process the meaning of tense‐conveyed temporal information in real time.
A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in non‐technical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org
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