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SUMMARY:Neurophysiological indices of morphosyntactic processing in native
  speakers and bilinguals - Jeffrey Hanna\, RCEAL\, University of Cambridge
DTSTART:20090609T150000Z
DTEND:20090609T163000Z
UID:TALK17813@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Susan Rolfe
DESCRIPTION:Deviations from an habituated auditory stimulus produce a heig
 htened response in the brain which can be measured with electrical (EEG) o
 r magnetic (MEG) neuroimaging techniques.  In recent years it has been dem
 onstrated by a number of studies that this brain response can be used to s
 tudy higher linguistic processes\, including syntax.  The great strength o
 f this technique is that the brain response to items in different syntacti
 c contexts is evident less than 1/5 of a second after stimulus\, and seems
  not to require the subject to attend to the stimuli\, thus allowing scrut
 iny of automatic\, even unconscious syntactic processes. \n\n\nWe have rep
 licated the results of previous studies on a group of native English speak
 ers in a MEG experiment examining subject-verb agreement violations\, and 
 are now applying the same experiment to Chinese speakers of English as a s
 econd language of varying proficiencies. We determined proficiency with a 
 series of behavioural tasks designed specifically to test both automatic p
 rocessing and metalinguistic knowledge of local dependencies between verbs
  and their subjects in English. Some bilinguals were able to show more nat
 ive-like patterns of performance than others\, and these subjects also sco
 red higher on external measures of proficiency\, including a standardised 
 grammar test.  However\, the critical question is whether native-like brai
 n responses will also be obtained. Preliminary findings from the bilingual
 s’ MEG results will be presented. \n
LOCATION:GR-06/07\, English Faculty Building
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