Negation processing in Chinese–English bilinguals: insights from the Stroop paradigm and an orientation task

ABSTRACT

Previous experimental work shows that negation processing can be direct in bipolar contexts where positive/negative states of affairs can be expressed by available lexical opposites (remember/forget) in monolingual speakers. However, in a unipolar context where such opposites are not available (sing/not sing), the processing first proceeds through the positive and only then the negative state of affairs. We test this claim with bilinguals to answer two questions. To what extent do (a) the processing routes and (b) the conceptual representations of the negated statement differ in bipolar/unipolar contexts when bilinguals process negation in their L1 and L2? 40 Chinese–English bilinguals were tested in a Negative Stroop Task (Expt. 1), in which they were instructed to verify whether the positive/negative English/Chinese colour expressions matched the colour they were printed in, either in bipolar (black/white) or unipolar contexts (green/not green). We also zoomed in on the conceptual representations of negation and tested another 40 Chinese–English bilinguals in an Orientation Task (Expt. 2). Participants compared positive/negative descriptions against pictures regarding the location of a star in either bipolar (left/right) or unipolar contexts (East/not East). The results suggest that language can drive changes when bilinguals process negation, with variations in the bipolar and unipolar contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Negation
• conceptual representation
• bilingual
• two-step model
• fusion model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In general, the standard deviations of the response time of the two experiments are large. One possible interpretation might be attributed to the variation in bilinguals’ language learning trajectories. For example, previous studies have suggested that language proficiency and frequency of language use seem to be important modulators in the interaction between bilingual acquisition and cognitive processing (e.g. Vanek and Selinker 2017). These individual differences may lead to a large dispersion of data, especially for time-sensitive measures.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The MOE Project of Humanities and Social Sciences [Grant Number 21YJC740077].

Notes on contributors

Haoruo Zhang

Haoruo Zhang is a lecturer at the College of Foreign Languages, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. She studies negation processing, bilingualism and linguistic relativity.

Yi Wang

Yi Wang is a lecturer at School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University. Her areas of research include linguistic relativity, motion event processing, and cognitive benefits of being bilingual.

Norbert Vanek

Norbert Vanek is a senior lecturer at the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, University of Auckland, New Zealand. His main research interests are bilingual cognition, linguistic relativity, event processing and open science.