ERIC Number: EJ966861
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Jun
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0093-934X
EISSN: N/A
Assessing the Double Phonemic Representation in Bilingual Speakers of Spanish and English: An Electrophysiological Study
Garcia-Sierra, Adrian; Ramirez-Esparza, Nairan; Silva-Pereyra, Juan; Siard, Jennifer; Champlin, Craig A.
Brain and Language, v121 n3 p194-205 Jun 2012
Event Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded from Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 10) to test pre-attentive speech discrimination in two language contexts. ERPs were recorded while participants silently read magazines in English or Spanish. Two speech contrast conditions were recorded in each language context. In the "phonemic in English" condition, the speech sounds represented two different phonemic categories in English, but represented the same phonemic category in Spanish. In the "phonemic in Spanish" condition, the speech sounds represented two different phonemic categories in Spanish, but represented the same phonemic categories in English. Results showed pre-attentive discrimination when the acoustics/phonetics of the speech sounds match the language context (e.g., "phonemic in English" condition during the English language context). The results suggest that language contexts can affect pre-attentive auditory change detection. Specifically, bilinguals' mental processing of stop consonants relies on contextual linguistic information. (Contains 4 figures.)
Descriptors: Phonetics, Phonemics, Bilingualism, Spanish, Second Language Learning, Diagnostic Tests, Brain Hemisphere Functions, Periodicals, English, Reading Processes, Acoustics, Speech, Context Effect, Auditory Perception, Cognitive Processes, Phonemes
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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