Bilingual memory representations in less fluent Chinese-English bilinguals: an event-related potential study.

Abstract

The present study was designed to investigate bilingual memory representations in less fluent Chinese-English bilinguals and the effect of word familiarity on bilingual memory representations with a translation priming paradigm and the event-related potential (ERP) technique. Three factors (translation order, word familiarity, and repetition status) were manipulated in this study, and the major dependent variable was the magnitude of the N400 repetition effect, which is related to semantic expectation and is an important physiological index of language processing. The results confirmed the asymmetry in bilingual memory with stronger L2-LI links compared to L1-L2 links in less fluent Chinese-English bilinguals, and that word familiarity was an important factor in the memory representations of these less fluent bilinguals.