Albert Costa
ICREA, Departament de Teconologia de la Informació i les comunicacions, Department Member
Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of these languages must be selected on the basis of some cue. The present study investigated whether the face of an interlocutor can serve as such... more
Bilinguals have two languages that are activated in parallel. During speech production, one of these languages must be selected on the basis of some cue. The present study investigated whether the face of an interlocutor can serve as such a cue. Spanish-Catalan and Dutch-French bilinguals were first familiarized with certain faces, each of which was associated with only one language, during simulated Skype conversations. Afterward, these participants performed a language production task in which they generated words associated with the words produced by familiar and unfamiliar faces displayed on-screen. When responding to familiar faces, participants produced words faster if the faces were speaking the same language as in the previous Skype simulation than if the same faces were speaking a different language. Furthermore, this language priming effect disappeared when it became clear that the interlocutors were actually bilingual. These findings suggest that faces can prime a language, but their cuing effect disappears when it turns out that they are unreliable as language cues.
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Research Interests: Second Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, Cognitive Control, Cognition, Bilingualism & the brain, and 14 moreMagnetic Resonance Imaging, Language, Intention, England, Speech, Bilingualism, Germany, Brain Mapping, Brain, Humans, Cues, Female, Male, and Young Adult(Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Language, Intention, England, Speech, Bilingualism, Germany, Brain Mapping, Brain, Humans, Cues, Female, Male, and Young Adult)
(Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Language, Intention, England, Speech, Bilingualism, Germany, Brain Mapping, Brain, Humans, Cues, Female, Male, and Young Adult)
Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, studies that have assessed whether affective features of words undergo the same processing in a native and nonnative language have provided mixed... more
Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, studies that have assessed whether affective features of words undergo the same processing in a native and nonnative language have provided mixed results: Studies that have found differences between native language (L1) and second language (L2) processing attributed the difference to the fact that L2 learned late in life would not be processed affectively, because affective associations are established during childhood. Other studies suggest that adult learners show similar effects of emotional features in L1 and L2. Differences in affective processing of L2 words can be linked to age and context of learning, proficiency, language dominance, and degree of similarity between L2 and L1. Here, in a lexical decision task on tightly matched negative, positive, and neutral words, highly proficient English speakers from typologically different L1s showed the same facilitation in processing emotiona...
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In three experiments, listeners detected vowel or consonant targets in lists of CV syllables constructed from five vowels and five consonants. Responses were faster in a predictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of... more
In three experiments, listeners detected vowel or consonant targets in lists of CV syllables constructed from five vowels and five consonants. Responses were faster in a predictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables all beginning with the same consonant) than in an unpredictable context (e.g., listening for a vowel target in a list of syllables beginning with different consonants). In Experiment 1, the listeners' native language was Dutch, in which vowel and consonant repertoires are similar in size. The difference between predictable and unpredictable contexts was comparable for vowel and consonant targets. In Experiments 2 and 3, the listeners' native language was Spanish, which has four times as many consonants as vowels; here effects of an unpredictable consonant context on vowel detection were significantly greater than effects of an unpredictable vowel context on consonant detection. This finding suggests that listeners' processing ...
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Phonetics, Speech perception, Spain, and 2 moreHumans and Reaction Time(Humans and Reaction Time)
(Humans and Reaction Time)
Language control refers to the cognitive mechanism that allows bilinguals to correctly speak in one language avoiding interference from the nontarget language. Bilinguals achieve this feat by engaging brain areas closely related to... more
Language control refers to the cognitive mechanism that allows bilinguals to correctly speak in one language avoiding interference from the nontarget language. Bilinguals achieve this feat by engaging brain areas closely related to cognitive control. However, 2 questions still await resolution: whether this network is differently engaged when controlling nonlinguistic representations, and whether this network is differently engaged when control is exerted upon a restricted set of lexical representations that were previously used (i.e., local control) as opposed to control of the entire language system (i.e., global control). In the present event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we investigated these 2 questions by employing linguistic and nonlinguistic blocked switching tasks in the same bilingual participants. We first report that the left prefrontal cortex is driven similarly for control of linguistic and nonlinguistic representations, suggesting its domain-gen...
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The basal ganglia are critically involved in language control (LC) processes, allowing a bilingual to utter correctly in one language without interference from the non-requested language. It has been hypothesized that the neural mechanism... more
The basal ganglia are critically involved in language control (LC) processes, allowing a bilingual to utter correctly in one language without interference from the non-requested language. It has been hypothesized that the neural mechanism of LC closely resembles domain-general executive control (EC). The purpose of the present study is to investigate the integrity of bilingual LC and its overlap with domain-general EC in a clinical population such as individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD), notoriously associated with structural damage in the basal ganglia. We approach these issues in two ways. First, we employed a language switching task to investigate the integrity of LC in a group of Catalan-Spanish bilingual individuals with PD, as compared to a group of matched healthy controls. Second, to test the relationship between domain-general EC and LC we compared the performances of individuals with PD and healthy controls also in a non-linguistic switching task. We highlight tha...
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ABSTRACT En: Cognitiva Madrid 2001, v. 13, n. 1; p. 3-35 Se investigan el desarrollo temporal de la codificación fonológica en la producción del lenguaje mediante cinco experimentos. En el Experimento 1 se utilizan una tarea de... more
ABSTRACT En: Cognitiva Madrid 2001, v. 13, n. 1; p. 3-35 Se investigan el desarrollo temporal de la codificación fonológica en la producción del lenguaje mediante cinco experimentos. En el Experimento 1 se utilizan una tarea de preparación de la respuesta y observamos que la producción de las palabras bisílabas podía ser facilitada tanto si los hablantes conocían con anterioridad la primera como la segunda sílaba. Los resultados del Experimento 2 se confirma que este efecto estaba sucediendo durante la producción. En los Experimentos 3 y 4, los participantes realizaron una tarea de detección de fonemas sobre palabras elicitadas a partir de la presentación de un dibujo. Los resultados de ambos experimentos mostraron que el fonema inicial de las palabras se detectaba más rápidamente que el resto de posiciones consonánticas, las cuales no diferieron entre sí. El Experimento 5 se utilizó como un control en que los participantes realizaron la tarea estándar de detección de fonemas sobre palabras presentadas auditativamente y que correspondían a los nombres de los dibujos empleados en el experimento 4. Como resultado, se obtuvo un aumento del tiempo de resupesta a medida que la posición del fonema dentro de la palabra se desplazaba hacia la derecha. Se considera conjuntamente, estos resultados ponen en entredicho el presupuesto de que la codificación fonológica es un proceso estrictamente serial, p.29-31
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Resumen: En este trabajo presentamos un experimento en el que se explora hasta qué punto el proceso de selección léxica es sensible a la frecuencia de palabra. Se solicitó a los participantes que denominaran dibujos presentados en dos... more
Resumen: En este trabajo presentamos un experimento en el que se explora hasta qué punto el proceso de selección léxica es sensible a la frecuencia de palabra. Se solicitó a los participantes que denominaran dibujos presentados en dos titos de listas: ...
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Do the integration of semantic information and that of world knowledge occur simultaneously or in sequence during sentence processing? To address this question, we investigated event-related brain potentials elicited by the critical word... more
Do the integration of semantic information and that of world knowledge occur simultaneously or in sequence during sentence processing? To address this question, we investigated event-related brain potentials elicited by the critical word of English sentences in three conditions: (1) correct; (2) semantic violation; (3) world knowledge violation (semantically correct but factually incorrect). Critically, we opted for low constraint sentence contexts (i.e., whilst being semantically congruent with the sentence context, critical words had low cloze probability). The processing of semantic violations differed from that of correct sentences as early as the P2 time-window. In the N400 time-window, the processing of semantic and world knowledge violations both differed significantly from that of correct sentences and differed significantly from one another. Overall, our results show that the brain needs approximately 200 ms more to detect a world knowledge violation than a semantic one.
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Research Interests: Decision Making, Ethical Theory, Language, Multidisciplinary, Emotions, and 4 moreHumans, Judgment, PLoS one, and Morals
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In this article we aimed to assess how Alzheimer's disease (AD), which... more
In this article we aimed to assess how Alzheimer's disease (AD), which is neurodegenerative, affects the linguistic performance of early, high-proficient bilinguals in their two languages. To this end, we compared the Picture Naming and Word Translation performances of two groups of AD patients varying in disease progression (Mild and Moderate) with that of bilingual individuals diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The results revealed that the linguistic deterioration caused by AD affected the two languages similarly. We also found that cognate status and word frequency were two major determinants of language performance in all three groups of participants. These results are consistent with the notion of a common neural substrate recruited to represent and process the two languages of high-proficient bilinguals.
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Category-specific semantic deficits in individuals suffering brain damage after relatively focal lesions provide an important source of evidence about the organization of semantic knowledge. However, whether... more
Category-specific semantic deficits in individuals suffering brain damage after relatively focal lesions provide an important source of evidence about the organization of semantic knowledge. However, whether Alzheimer's disease (AD), in which the brain damage is more widespread, affects semantic categories to a different extent is still controversial. In the present study, we assess this issue by means of the semantic priming technique. AD patients with a mild impairment of their semantic knowledge showed comparable priming effects to that of controls for the categories of animals and artifacts. Interestingly, however, patients with a moderate impairment of their semantic knowledge showed a normal priming effect for animals but a very reduced priming effect (if any) for artifacts. These results reveal that AD may affect the semantic knowledge of different semantic categories to a different extent. The implications of this observation for current theoretical accounts of semantic representation in the brain are discussed.
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Science, Semantics, Language disorders, Memory, and 16 moreHumans, Female, Male, Reaction Time, Verbal behavior, Association, Aged, Semantic Priming, Questionnaires, Neuropsychologia, Semantic representation, Alzheimer Disease, Task Performance and Analysis, Neurosciences, Logistic Models, and Brain Damage
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The ability to speak two languages often marvels monolinguals, although bilinguals report no difficulties in achieving this feat. Here, we examine how learning and using two languages affect language acquisition and processing as well as... more
The ability to speak two languages often marvels monolinguals, although bilinguals report no difficulties in achieving this feat. Here, we examine how learning and using two languages affect language acquisition and processing as well as various aspects of cognition. We do so by addressing three main questions. First, how do infants who are exposed to two languages acquire them without apparent difficulty? Second, how does language processing differ between monolingual and bilingual adults? Last, what are the collateral effects of bilingualism on the executive control system across the lifespan? Research in all three areas has not only provided some fascinating insights into bilingualism but also revealed new issues related to brain plasticity and language learning.