The status of the first letter improves with second language proficiency for different-script bilinguals: evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals

• Fengjiao Cong ^[1] ; Changze Zhao ^[2] ; Baoguo Chen ^[2]
  1. [1] Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education; Institute for Brain Research andRehabilitation, and Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China NormalUniversity, Guangzhou
  2. [2] Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology,National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing NormalUniversity
• Localización: International journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, ISSN 1367-0050, Vol. 28, Nº. 7, 2025, págs. 726-743
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2025.2468168
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The present study aimed to examine whether the first-letter identity/position advantage in the Roman script could be generalized to Chinese-English bilinguals with different scripts and to address the mechanism underlying the first-letter advantage in Chinese-English bilinguals. Four types of nonwords (substituted-first letter nonwords, e.g. lrunk; substituted-internal letter nonwords, e.g. tronk; transposed-first letter nonwords, e.g. rtunk; transposed-internal letter nonwords; e.g. turnk) plus base words (e.g. trunk) were briefly presented to participants, and the EEG signal of participants was recorded while they performed a lexical decision task. ERP results in N400 show that there was a first-letter identity advantage in Chinese-English bilinguals, and the first-letter position advantage increased with English proficiency. These findings suggest that (a) the first-letter advantage also exists in Chinese-English bilinguals, and (b) the mechanism behind it is adaptive modification rather than sequential processing, which supports the modified receptive field (MRF) hypothesis.

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