Guillaume Thierry

Building on initiatives to promote high quality methodologies and Open Science practices in the language sciences, Language Learning will introduce, as of March 2020, a new manuscript type entitled Methods Showcase Articles (MSAs). The purpose of MSAs is to introduce new or emerging qualitative and quantitative methods, techniques, or instrumentation for language data collection, cleaning, sampling, coding, scoring, and analysis. MSAs are intended to describe methods and provide detailed examples of their application such that language researchers can easily adopt or adapt them in future studies. In this editorial, we outline the goals, format, and benefits of MSAs, discuss how they can advance language sciences, and discuss potential concerns.

Building on initiatives to promote high quality methodologies and Open Science practices in the language sciences, Language Learning will request, as of January 1, 2020, that all submissions to the journal include, whenever possible, the full materials used in the study for peer review. This includes materials used to elicit and code primary and secondary data (such as questionnaires, language tests, interview or observation schedules, and coding schemas). These materials will be shared with reviewers to better inform the peer review process and ensure rigorous evaluation of the methods used. If the manuscript is accepted, authors will then be encouraged to make their materials available on an open, sustainable repository, though there is no requirement to do so. In this Editorial, we outline the benefits of this policy for the advancement of the language sciences and discuss some potential concerns that authors may have.

Objectives:Spanish and English contrast in adjective–noun word order: for example, brown dress (English) vs. vestido marrón (‘dress brown’, Spanish). According to the Matrix Language model ( MLF) word order in code-switched sentences must be compatible with the word order of the matrix language, but working within the minimalist program (MP), Cantone and MacSwan arrived at the descriptive generalization that the position of the noun phrase relative to the adjective is determined by the adjective’s language. Our aim is to evaluate the predictions derived from these two models regarding adjective–noun order in Spanish–English code-switched sentences.Methodology:We contrasted the predictions from both models regarding the acceptability of code-switched sentences with different adjective–noun orders that were compatible with the MP, the MLF, both, or none. Acceptability was assessed in Experiment 1 with a 5-point Likert and in Experiment 2 with a 2-Alternative Forced Choice (2AFC) task....

Recent studies have identified neural correlates of language effects on perception in static domains of experience such as colour and objects. The generalization of such effects to dynamic domains like motion events remains elusive. Here, we focus on grammatical differences between languages relevant for the description of motion events and their impact on visual scene perception. Two groups of native speakers of German or English were presented with animated videos featuring a dot travelling along a trajectory towards a geometrical shape (endpoint). English is a language with grammatical aspect in which attention is drawn to trajectory and endpoint of motion events equally. German, in contrast, is a non-aspect language which highlights endpoints. We tested the comparative perceptual saliency of trajectory and endpoint of motion events by presenting motion event animations (primes) followed by a picture symbolising the event (target): In 75% of trials, the animation was followed by ...

Language has been shown to influence non-linguistic cognitive operations such as colour perception, object categorization, and motion event perception. Here, we show that language also modulates higher level processing, such as semantic knowledge. Using event-related brain potentials, we show that highly fluent Welsh-English bilinguals require significantly less processing effort when reading sentences in Welsh which contain factually correct information about Wales, than when reading sentences containing the same information presented in English. Crucially, culturally irrelevant information was processed similarly in both Welsh and English. Our findings show that even in highly proficient bilinguals, language interacts with factors associated with personal identity, such as culture, to modulate online semantic processing.

Each human language possesses a set of distinctive syntactic rules. Here, we show that balanced Welsh-English bilinguals reading in English unconsciously apply a morphosyntactic rule that only exists in Welsh. The Welsh soft mutation rule determines whether the initial consonant of a noun changes based on the grammatical context (e.g., the feminine noun cath--"cat" mutates into gath in the phrase y gath--"the cat"). Using event-related brain potentials, we establish that English nouns artificially mutated according to the Welsh mutation rule (e.g., "goncert" instead of "concert") require significantly less processing effort than the same nouns implicitly violating Welsh syntax. Crucially, this effect is found whether or not the mutation affects the same initial consonant in English and Welsh, showing that Welsh syntax is applied to English regardless of phonological overlap between the two languages. Overall, these results demonstrate for the ...

Bilingualism research has established language non-selective lexical access in comprehension. However, the evidence for such an effect in production remains sparse and its neural time-course has not yet been investigated. We demonstrate that German-English bilinguals performing a simple picture-naming task exclusively in English spontaneously access the phonological form of -unproduced- German words. Participants were asked to produce English adjective-noun sequences describing the colour and identity of familiar objects presented as line drawings. We associated adjective and picture names such that their onsets phonologically overlapped in English (e.g., green goat), in German through translation (e.g., blue flower - 'blaue Blume'), or in neither language. As expected, phonological priming in English modulated event-related brain potentials over the frontocentral scalp region from around 440ms after picture onset. Phonological priming in German was detectable even earlier, ...

It is now established that native language affects one's perception of the world. However, it is unknown whether this effect is merely driven by conscious, language-based evaluation of the environment or whether it reflects fundamental differences in perceptual processing between individuals speaking different languages. Using brain potentials, we demonstrate that the existence in Greek of 2 color terms—ghalazio and ble—distinguishing light and dark blue leads to greater and faster perceptual discrimination of these colors in native speakers of Greek than in native speakers of English. The visual mismatch negativity, an index of automatic and preattentive change detection, was similar for blue and green deviant stimuli during a color oddball detection task in English participants, but it was significantly larger for blue than green deviant stimuli in native speakers of Greek. These findings establish an implicit effect of language-specific terminology on human color perception.

A key question in the study of bilingual functioning is whether both the languages known are active at all times or whether one language can be selectively inactivated when bilingual individuals are tuned to the other language. Psycholinguistic and neuroscientific investigations have provided inconsistent data regarding the level of semantic activation of the two languages, even in the case of highly proficient bilinguals. In the present study, highly proficient, early Welsh/English bilinguals were presented with words in both their languages and were required to make word length decisions on words in one language while disregarding words in the other. Participants were not explicitly told about the organization of the word stream in pairs manipulating (a) semantic relatedness, (b) language of the prime and (c) language of the target in a fully counterbalanced two-by-two-by-two design. We observed significant semantic priming for both English and Welsh target words, irrespective of the active language, and independent of performance in the low-level letter counting task. We conclude that accessing the meaning of a written word is automatic in the two languages even when fluent bilingual adults are instructed to disregard words in one of their languages.

... Guillaume Thierry 1 , Clara D Martin 1, 2 , Paul E Downing 1 & Alan J Pegna 3: School of Psychology, Brigantia Building, Penrallt Road, University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2AS, UK. ... Correspondence to: Guillaume Thierry 1 e-mail: g.thierry@bangor.ac.uk. Introduction. Reply: ...

Event‐related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to test the involvement of the inferior prefrontal cortex in verbal working memory. Pairs of French nouns were presented to ten native French speakers who had to make semantic or grammatical gender decisions. Verbal working memory involvement was manipulated by making the categorization of the second noun optional. Decisions could be made after processing the first noun only (RELEASE condition) or after processing the two nouns (HOLD condition). Reaction times suggested faster processing for gender than for semantic category in RELEASE. Despite the absence of anatomical difference across tasks and conditions in the wide activated network, the haemodynamic response peak latencies of the inferior prefrontal cortex were significantly delayed in HOLD versus RELEASE while no such peak delay was observed in the superior temporal gyrus. Interestingly, this pattern did not interact with language tasks. This study shows that cognit...

Children raised in the home as English or Welsh monolinguals or English–Welsh bilinguals were tested on untrained word form recognition using both behavioral and neurophysiological procedures. Behavioral measures confirmed the onset of a familiarity effect at 11 months in English but failed to identify it in monolingual Welsh infants between 9 and 12 months. In the neurophysiological procedure the familiarity effect was detected as early as 10 months in English but did not reach significance in monolingual Welsh. Bilingual children showed word form familiarity effects by 11 months in both languages and also revealed an online time course for word recognition that combined effects found for monolingual English and Welsh. To account for the findings, accentual, grammatical, and sociolinguistic differences between English and Welsh are considered.

Fifteen years of research have focused heavily on the N170 peak of event- related brain potentials to investigate electrophysiological correlates of face processing. The most established face-selective effect to date is the modulation of N170 amplitude by face inversion. Here, we show that a N170 modulation of the same magnitude as that recorded for faces is found in native readers of English for words presented upside-down. Moreover, this “word-inversion effect” is absent in non-native readers of English who have acquired a logographic language in childhood. These results demonstrate that the N170 inversion effect is not specific to faces and argue strongly in favor of an expertise-based account of the neural processes indexed by the N1.

Research into language-emotion interactions has revealed intriguing cognitive inhibition effects by emotionally negative words in bilinguals. Here, we turn to the domain of human risk taking and show that the experience of positive recency in games of chance-the "hot hand" effect-is diminished when game outcomes are provided in a second language rather than the native language. We engaged late Chinese-English bilinguals with "play" or "leave" decisions upon presentation of equal-odds bets while manipulating language of feedback and outcome value. When positive game outcomes were presented in their second language, English, participants subsequently took significantly fewer gambles and responded slower compared with the trials in which equivalent feedback was provided in Chinese, their native language. Positive feedback was identified as driving the cross-language difference in preference for risk over certainty: feedback for previous winning outcomes presented in Chinese increased subsequent risk taking, whereas in the English context no such effect was observed. Complementing this behavioral effect, event-related brain potentials elicited by feedback words showed an amplified response to Chinese relative to English in the feedback-related negativity window, indicating a stronger impact in the native than in the second language. We also observed a main effect of language on P300 amplitude and found it correlated with the cross-language difference in risk selections, suggesting that the greater the difference in attention between languages, the greater the difference in risk-taking behavior. These results provide evidence that the hot hand effect is at least attenuated when an individual operates in a non-native language.

Color perception has been a traditional test-case of the idea that the language we speak affects our perception of the world.1 It is now established that categorical perception of color is verbally mediated and varies with culture and language.2 However, it is unknown whether the well-demonstrated language effects on color discrimination really reach down to the level of visual perception, or whether they only reflect post-perceptual cognitive processes. Using brain potentials in a color oddball detection task with Greek and English speakers, we demonstrate that language effects may exist at a level that is literally perceptual, suggesting that speakers of different languages have differently structured minds.

A number of studies have shown that from an early age, bilinguals outperform their monolingual peers on executive control tasks. We previously found that bilingual children and adults also display greater attention to unexpected language switches within speech. Here, we investigated the effect of a bilingual upbringing on speech perception in one language. We recorded monolingual and bilingual toddlers' event-related potentials (ERPs) to spoken words preceded by pictures. Words matching the picture prime elicited an early frontal positivity in bilingual participants only, whereas later ERP amplitudes associated with semantic processing did not differ between groups. These results add to the growing body of evidence that bilingualism increases overall attention during speech perception whilst semantic integration is unaffected.