Language processing in bilinguals

Abstract

The present study investigated the language processing strategies of three subgroups of adult bilinguals with different histories of language acquisition: infant bilinguals whose bilinguality dated from infancy; childhood bilinguals who became bilingual around 5 years of age; and adolescent bilinguals who had become bilingual at secondary school age only. All were completely balanced bilinguals in French and English at the time of testing. The experimental procedure, a language recognition task, required the subjects to indicate, by pressing a response button, whether each of a series of words, presented monaurally through earphones, was French or English. Concomitantly, left and right hemisphere EEG activity was monitored, with measures taken of latency to N 1, latency to P 2, and N 1-P 2 peak-to-peak amplitudes. Results indicated shorter latencies to N 1 in the left than in the right hemisphere for the infant and childhood bilinguals but shorter latencies in the right hemisphere for the adolescent bilinguals. Overall, the N 1 latency was shorter for the adolescent subgroup than for the two other subgroups. There were no RT differences. The findings appear to reflect strategy differences: The adolescent group seemed to rely more on a right hemisphere-based, possibly more gestalt-like or melodic strategy, while the early bilinguals relied more on a left hemisphere-based, possibly semantic or analytic type of strategy. The results are discussed in terms of previous research on bilingual subtypes and general forms of language processing among bilinguals.