Cross-language inhibitory effect on spoken word retrieval in Cantonese-English bilinguals : a mismatch negativity study

Abstract

The present study aimed to investigate whether using one language will inhibit word retrieval of the other language in bilinguals, namely the cross-language inhibitory effect. In the study, dominant Cantonese-English bilinguals from Hong Kong were recruited. Subjects were instructed to silently read Chinese and English stories displayed on a monitor while ignoring the speech stimuli that were delivered to them auditorily. The speech stimuli were Cantonese actual and pseudo- words, and English actual and pseudo- words. We measured subjects’ event-related potentials (ERP) and evaluated the mismatch negativity (MMN) responses to each speech stimulus in each condition (reading Chinese stories vs reading English stories). The results indicated that cross-language inhibitory effect had no influence on the pre-attentive stage of word retrieval as reflected by the modulation of MMN responses. Through comparison to the literature, we argued that cross-language inhibitory effect became ineffective when bottom-up processing and cross-modal perception were involved during word retrieval. Besides, the results showed that the event-related potentials (ERPs) to each speech stimulus were significantly reduced in the English stories condition. Regarding this finding, three hypotheses were proposed to account for the reduced auditory responses in the English stories condition.