Biomedical subjects

Viorica Marian

Publications and source records attributed to Viorica Marian.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Lexical-semantic organization in bilingual children: evidence from a repeated word association task.

PURPOSE: This study examined lexical-semantic organization of bilingual children in their 2 languages and in relation to monolingual age-mates. METHOD: Twelve Mandarin-English bilingual and 12 English monolingual children generated 3 associations to each of 36 words. Responses were coded as paradigmatic (dog-cat) or syntagmatic (dog-bark). RESULTS: Within the bilingual group, word association performance was comparable and correlated between 1st and 2nd languages. Bilingual and monolingual children demonstrated similar patterns of responses, but subtle group differences were also revealed. When between-group comparisons were made on English measures, there was a bilingual advantage in paradigmatic responding during the 1st elicitation and for verbs. CONCLUSION: Results support previous studies in finding parallel development in bilinguals' 1st- and 2nd-language lexical-semantic skills and provide preliminary evidence that bilingualism may enhance paradigmatic organization of the semantic lexicon.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2003

Shared and separate systems in bilingual language processing: converging evidence from eyetracking and brain imaging.

The neurological and cognitive aspects of bilingual language processing were examined in late Russian-English bilinguals using headband-mounted eyetracking and functional neuroimaging. A series of three eyetracking studies suggested that, at early stages of word recognition, bilinguals can activate both languages in parallel, even when direct linguistic input is in one language only. A functional neuroimaging study suggested that, although the same general structures are active for both languages, differences within these general structures are present across languages and across levels of processing. For example, different centers of activation were associated with first versus second language processing within the left Inferior Frontal Gyrus, but not within the Superior Temporal Gyrus. We suggest that parallel activation (as found with eyetracking) and shared cortical structures (as found with fMRI) may be characteristic of early stages of language processing (such as phonetic processing), but the two languages may be using separate structures at later stages of processing (such as lexical processing).

Adult↗