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INTRODUCTION: Priming paradigms in bilingualism research

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Abstract

The present thematic set of studies comprises five concise review articles on the use of priming paradigms in different areas of bilingualism research. Their aim is to provide readers with a quick overview of how priming paradigms can be employed in particular subfields of bilingualism research and to make readers aware of the methodological issues that need to be considered when using priming techniques.

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Abundant evidence suggests bilinguals show advantages in inhibitory control as opposed to monolinguals. Recently, this supposed bilingual advantage has come under severe scrutiny, with new neuroimaging data contributing to the controversy. The present study employed a cross-language mixed-design electroencephalography paradigm to investigate bilingual advantages in Stroop tasks as well as effects of cross-linguistic priming on bilingual Stroop performance. The results indicate no differences between monolinguals and sequential bilinguals on a behavioural level or conflict resolution waveforms, but underlying distinctions in N2 negativity. Bilinguals showed longer reaction times and more negativity to within-language L2 trials and did not exhibit switching effects. The present study therefore does not support the bilingual advantage theory in inhibition, though does indicate some distinctions as regards conflict monitoring may exist.
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The aim of this review is to provide a selective overview of priming studies which have employed the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique in order to investigate bilingual language processing. The priming technique can reveal an implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus influences the processing of another stimulus. Behavioral approaches, such as measuring reaction times, may not always be enough for providing a full view on the exact mechanisms and the time-course of language comprehension. Instead, ERPs have a time-resolution of a millisecond and hence, they offer a precise temporal overview of the underlying neural processes involved in language processing. In our review, we summarize experimental research which has combined priming with ERP measurements, thus creating a valuable tool for examining the neurophysiological correlates of language processing in the bilingual brain.
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Research on nonnative auditory word recognition makes use of different versions of a lexical decision task with phonological priming to explore the role of phonological form in nonnative lexical access. In a medium-lag lexical decision task with phonological priming, nonnative speakers treat minimal pairs of words differentiated by a difficult phonological contrast as a repetition of the same word. While native speakers show facilitation in repetition priming only for identical word pairs, nonnative speakers also show facilitation for minimal pairs. In short-lag phonological priming, when the prime and the target have phonologically overlapping onsets, nonnative speakers show facilitation, but native speakers show inhibition. This review discusses two possible reasons for facilitation in nonnative phonological priming. These are reduced sensitivity to nonnative phonological contrasts, and reduced lexical competition of nonnative words with underdifferentiated, or fuzzy phonolexical representations. Such nonnative words are processed sublexically, which leads to facilitation in nonnative phonological priming.
Article
This paper provides a concise overview of the cross-modal priming methodology, it presents a selection of key studies to illustrate how this method can be used to address lexical and syntactic processing and discusses advantages and disadvantages, along with issues that need to be taken into consideration when designing studies that address sentence processing in bilinguals.
Article
The review describes how morphological priming can be utilised to study the processing of morphologically complex words in bilinguals. The article starts with an overview of established experimental paradigms based on morphological priming, discusses a number of basic methodological pitfalls with regard to experimental design and materials, then reviews previous L2 morphological priming studies, and concludes with a brief discussion of recent developments in the field as well as possible future directions.
Article
In this review, we examine how structural priming has been used to investigate the representation of first and second language syntactic structures in bilinguals. Most experiments suggest that structures that are identical in the first and second language have a single, shared mental representation. The results from structures that are similar but not fully identical are less clear, but they may be explained by assuming that first and second language representations are merely connected rather than fully shared. Some research has also used structural priming to investigate the representation of cognate words. We will also consider whether cross-linguistic structural priming taps into long-term implicit learning effects. Finally, we discuss recent research that has investigated how second language syntactic representations develop as learners’ proficiency increases.