An Electrophysiological Study of Translation in Spanish - English Bilinguals
Open Access
- Author:
- Marinello, Katherine Megan
- Area of Honors:
- Communication Sciences and Disorders
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dr. Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Honors Advisor
Dr. Krista M Wilkinson, Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- bilingualism
translation
semantics - Abstract:
- Language processing in bilinguals is becoming an area of increased interest because the number of individuals speaking more than one language is increasing. The current study explored language processing in bilingual speakers and the link between translations and accessing concepts. Individuals involved in this experiment were raised speaking Spanish and later switched language dominance to English or grew up bilingual with English and Spanish and now consider themselves English dominant. Previous research has found that when an individual is a novice in their second language, there is translation occurring from their second language back into their first language, whereas when an individual is dominant in a language there is a semantic association between a word and the meaning (Sunderman & Kroll 2006). The current study hypothesized based on this research that as an individual becomes fluent in both languages, translation may not be as important as the semantic association between a word and its meaning. The current study utilized electroencephalography (EEG) which is a process of observing the brain’s electrical activity through the use of electrodes. There were 5 females and 7 males included in this study. The total of 12 participants ranged in age from 19 to 31 and were all students at The Pennsylvania State University. Through the use of EEG, the current study evaluated if individuals were relying on translation cues or on semantic cues to access meanings of words. The results of this study revealed that these individuals did utilize the semantic association between a word and its concept, but the translation aspect was also active. Therefore, bilingual speakers in the current study who switched language dominance from English to Spanish activated both links of translation and semantics.