Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
10454394 | Biological Psychology | 2010 | 10 Pages |
Abstract
We investigated the lateralization of the posterior event-related potential (ERP) component N1 (120-170Â ms) to written words in two groups of bilinguals. Fourteen Early English-Welsh bilinguals and 14 late learners of Welsh performed a semantic categorization task on separate blocks of English and Welsh words. In both groups, the N1 was strongly lateralized over the left posterior sites for both languages. A robust correlation was found between N1 asymmetry for English and N1 asymmetry for Welsh words in both groups. Furthermore, in Late Bilinguals, the N1 asymmetry for Welsh words increased with years of experience in Welsh. These data suggest that, in Late Bilinguals, the lateralization of neural circuits involved in written word recognition for the second language is associated to the organization for the first language, and that increased experience with the second language is associated to a larger functional cerebral asymmetry in favor of the left hemisphere.
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Authors
Giordana Grossi, Nicola Savill, Enlli Thomas, Guillaume Thierry,