Language lateralization in early and late bilinguals using an international vocabulary

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_65DB06FB3032
Type
Inproceedings: an article in a conference proceedings.
Publication sub-type
Poster: Summary – with images – on one page of the results of a researche project. The summaries of the poster must be entered in "Abstract" and not "Poster".
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Language lateralization in early and late bilinguals using an international vocabulary
Title of the conference
4th North Sea Meeting on Brain Asymmetries
Author(s)
Willemin J., Hausmann M., Dael N., Gieruc K., Fioravera A., Mohr C
Organization
University of Durham, Durham, UK
Publication state
Published
Issued date
09/2014
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Language
english
Abstract
In lateralized Lexical Decision Tasks (LDT), accuracy is commonly higher and reaction times are commonly faster for right visual field (RVF) than left visual field (LVF) presentations. This visual field differences are thought to demonstrate the left hemisphere's dominance for language. Unfortunately, different tasks and words are used between studies and languages making direct comparisons difficult. For example, high frequency words show a performance advantage over low frequency words. Moreover, demographic variables impact on lateralized behavior such as language knowledge (one versus several, early acquired versus late acquired). We here aim to alleviate some of these obstacles by presenting results from a lateralized LDT for which we selected words between 4 and 6 letters used in five different languages, i.e. English, French, German, Dutch and Italian. In this first study using these words, we compared performance of right- and left-handed students being either early or late bilinguals (acquired before or after the age of 6 years) from a French-speaking University in Switzerland. Results showed a left hemispheric advantage (accuracy, reaction times) for all groups, with a trend for early as compared to late bilinguals to be less accurate and taking longer in lexical decisions. These results show that the current words result in solid visual field differences, and do so irrespective of how many languages are spoken. While early bilinguals might experience a slight performance disadvantage, it was not affecting visual field differences.
Create date
14/09/2014 20:56
Last modification date
20/08/2019 15:21
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