Cross-language activation of culture-specific features in Chinese-English bilinguals

Dong et al. (2005) proposed that when an individual learns a word in a second language (L2), they link the features from the translation in their first language (L1) to that word, and as they become proficient in L2, bilinguals drop L1-specific features and add L2-specific features to their L2 conceptual representations. The present study tested this proposal with Chinese-English bilinguals using an English semantic priming task with event related potentials (ERP). Primes were animal names (owl), and targets were either related in English (WISE), in Chinese (MISFORTUNE), or were unrelated. For English monolinguals, a priming effect was observed in the P250, N400, and LPC components only for pairs related in English (owl-WISE). For bilinguals, a priming effect was observed for pairs related in Chinese (owl-MISFORTUNE) in the N400 and LPC, indicating that the bilinguals link L2 words with L1-specific features. An LPC priming effect was also found in bilinguals for pairs related in English (owl-WISE), suggesting that the bilinguals have developed new connections between L2 words and L2-specific features.