Lexical Decision and Semantic Relatedness Judgment Processing
Open Access
- Author:
- Exton, Erika Lynn
- Area of Honors:
- Interdisciplinary in Communications Sciences and Disorders and Linguistics
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Janet van Hell, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Honors Advisor
Lisa A Reed, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- semantic processing
concreteness
ERP
bilingualism
aphasia - Abstract:
- Numerous studies on semantic memory observed that monolinguals are faster and more accurate in processing concrete than abstract words. However, many aspects about bilingual semantic processing and lexical-semantic memory are not yet fully understood, including concreteness effects in second language (L2) processing. Furthermore, no study to date has compared unbalanced bilinguals and people with aphasia (PWA) on abstract and concrete word processing, although there is reason to suspect similar processing of the weaker language in bilinguals and the disrupted language in PWA. Both unbalanced bilinguals and monolingual English PWA may have weaker connections between the lexical form in English and the conceptual representation. This study involves Dutch-English bilinguals, neurologically healthy English monolinguals, and English monolinguals with aphasia and examines concreteness effects in lexical decision and semantic relatedness judgment tasks in English. Behavioral concreteness effects in L2 lexical decision were small and modulated by second language proficiency; furthermore, there was a stronger N400 for concrete than abstract words. Robust concreteness effects were found in the L2 semantic relationship judgment task, and for abstract words only, performance was better for associated than similar pairings. ERP data showed a larger N400 component in the concrete words for associated than similar pairings, and a reversed effect for abstract words. PWA did not show the expected concreteness effect in the lexical decision task but did show the same pattern as the bilinguals in the semantic relatedness task, though the results did not reach significance.