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10 - Electrophysiology of Semantic Violations and Lexical Ambiguity Resolution in Bilingual Sentence Processing

from Part IV - Neuroscience of Bilingual Lexical Access

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2019

Roberto R. Heredia
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
Anna B. Cieślicka
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
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Summary

This chapter presents an overview of the current electrophysiological findings in the area of bilingual semantic processing. Apart from the discussion of semantic violations, it extends to topics such as lexical semantic anticipation, semantic ambiguity, meaning construction, and interlingual homograph processing. Specifically, the chapter focuses on the changes in amplitudes and latency of the N400 and the Late Positive Complex (LPC) by such participant characteristics as age of exposure, proficiency level, and language dominance. Special attention is devoted to how semantic constraints influence the processing of words in the L2 in sentence context as visible in modulations of the N400 and LPC components. Finally, neural oscillations are discussed, in particular the relationship between increases in theta oscillations and semantic processing in the L1 and L2.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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Further Reading

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van Assche, E., Duyck, W., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2016). Context effects in bilingual sentence processing: Task specificity. In Heredia, R. R., Altarriba, J., & Cieślicka, A. B. (Eds.), Methods in bilingual reading comprehension research (pp. 1131). New York: Springer.Google Scholar

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