Can bilinguals see it coming? Word anticipation in L2 sentence reading.

• DOI: 10.1037/a0036756
• Publication Date: 2014-05-05T21:10:40Z
• Authors: Alice Foucart; Clara D. Martin; Eva M. Moreno; Albert Costa
• Keywords: Anticipation (artificial intelligence); P600; Grammatical Gender; Sentence processing

Why is it more difficult to comprehend a 2nd (L2) than 1st language (L1)? In the present article we investigate whether difficulties during L2 sentence comprehension come from differences in way L1 and speakers anticipate upcoming words. We recorded brain activity (event-related potentials) of Spanish monolinguals, French-Spanish late bilinguals, Spanish-Catalan early bilinguals while reading sentences Spanish. manipulated ending highly constrained so that critical noun was either expected or not. The unexpected nouns were different gender could observe potential anticipation effects already on article. line with previous studies, modulation N400 effect observed noun, followed by an anterior positivity noun. Importantly, this pattern found all 3 groups, suggesting that, at least when their 2 languages are closely related, able words similar manner as monolinguals.