Cultural context as a biasing factor for language activation in bilinguals

ABSTRACT

Two studies investigated how cultural context and familiarity impact lexical access in Korean-English bilingual and English monolingual adults. ERPs were recorded while participants decided whether a word and picture matched or not. Pictures depicted versions of objects that were prototypically associated with North American or Korean culture and named in either English or Korean, creating culturally congruent and incongruent trials. For bilinguals, culturally congruent trials facilitated responding but ERP results showed that images from both cultures were processed similarly. For monolinguals, culturally incongruent pairs produced longer RTs and larger N400s than congruent items, indicating more effortful processing. Thus, an unfamiliar culture impeded linguistic processing for monolinguals but facilitated it for bilinguals familiar with that culture. Study 2 presented images that were more or less familiar and both groups replicated the pattern for monolinguals in Study 1. Therefore, in Study 1 monolinguals responded to familiarity but bilinguals responded to culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Lexical selection
• bilingualism
• culture
• ERP

Acknowledgements

We thank Lori Astheimer, Michelle Goodman, Zehra Kamani, Hanah Chung, and Ashley Etherington for their contribution to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by [grant number R01HD052523] from the NIH National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and [grant number A2559] from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to EB.