Lexical access in trilinguals: eletrophysiological data on the processing of interlingual homographs

• Grant number: 17/00246-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: September 01, 2017
• End date: February 28, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Maria Teresa Carthery Goulart
• Grantee: Marina Fernandes Neves Lameira
• Host Institution: Centro de Matemática, Computação e Cognição (CMCC). Universidade Federal do ABC (UFABC). Ministério da Educação (Brasil). Santo André , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The phenomenon of bilingualism as a rule instead of an exception has received attention from linguists, educators and neuroscientists for some decades. As advantages of bilingualism one could mention a better executive control and cognitive reserve. Recent studies on Bilingualism in the perspective of Neurosciences have investigated, for instance, the neural architecture underlying the languages of bilingual individuals, the language switch phenomenon (ability of speaking a language A or B according to communicative demands) and the bilingual lexical access (mental process of lexical item selection). To the bilingual lexical access two hypotheses have been proposed: a selective lexical access, that is, exclusive to the target language, and non-selective, that is, both languages are supposed to be activated during language production and comprehension. The BIA+ model (Bilingual Interactive Activation) of Dijkstra and Van Heuven (2002) stands the latter viewpoint, with each language represented in a node contained in mental lexicon, allowing the simultaneous activation or inhibition of interlingual lexical elements according to the task imposed, such as, for instance, recognition of identical and non-identical cognates. This study intends to investigate: a) if the non-selective language access hypothesis proposed by BIA+ model and b) the cognate faciliation effect (a faster recognition of cognate than non-cognate words) can be verified during the lexical access of second and/or third language of trilingual individuals, by measuring behavioral and electrophysiological data, in particular the N400 component of ERPs (event-related potentials). (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

MARINA FERNANDES NEVES LAMEIRA; FELIPE RODRIGUES BEZERRA; PÂMELA FREITAS PEREIRA TOASSI; ANDRÉ MASCIOLI CRAVO; MARIA TERESA CARTHERY-GOULART. Evidence of non-selective lexical access to second and third language in unbalanced multilinguals: an N400 study on the processing of interlingual homographs. Pandaemonium Germanicum, v. 26, n. 49, p. 35-67, 2023-05-01. (17/00246-0)

MARINA FERNANDES NEVES LAMEIRA; ELAINE CRISTINA DE BARROS TORRESI; KATERINA LUKASOVA; MARIA TERESA CARTHERY-GOULART. LÍNGUAS EM CONFLITO: MODELOS DE ACESSO LEXICAL A PARTIR DO INPUT ORTOGRÁFICO EM BILÍNGUES E MULTILÍNGUES E O EFEITO DO MULTILINGUISMO SOBRE AS FUNÇÕES EXECUTIVAS. Cadernos de Tradução, v. 40, p. 185-216, 2021-03-10. (15/09733-6, 17/00246-0)