Even fluent bilingual speakers of a language acquired beyond adolescence subconsciously resort to their native language, in a sort of 'unconscious instant translation service'.
These surprising findings of the research team, at Bangor University's School of Psychology are published in the prestigious American Journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA (Thierry and Wu, 2007, 06-09927 available on-line 10.7.07).
(PressZoom) - Even fluent bilingual speakers of a language acquired beyond adolescence subconsciously resort to their native language, in a sort of 'unconscious instant translation service'. These surprising findings of the research team, at Bangor University's School of Psychology are published in the prestigious American Journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA ( Thierry and Wu, 2007, 06-09927 available on-line 10.7.07 ).
By literally 'reading the minds' of Chinese-English bilingual speakers, the authors, Dr Guillaume Thierry and Yan Jing Wu were able to tell their Chinese participants that they had been accessing their native language, although they were totally unaware of it.
"Psycholinguists have tried to investigate how the brain copes with two language systems for nearly half a century. Following this evidence, we now have a clearer understanding of what happens when our brains process a late acquired second language, however it now throws up more questions that we'd like to answer, said Yan Jing Wu.
"Even while we consciously listen to late-acquired second language words, our brains are automatically also 'listening' in the first language," he explains.
The Chinese participants, who'd been living in the UK for an average of 18 months, took part in an English language test based on whether pairs of English words were related in meaning or not. What was not apparent to them was that some of the English word pairs had a character overlap and sound connection in their Chinese translations. When there was no relationship in meaning between English words but there was a relationship between Chinese translations, e.g., ham and train ( Huo Che - Huo Tui in Chinese ), the repetition in Chinese was detected by brain waves recorded at the surface of the scalp.
"The results show that the Chinese-English speakers, who'd describe themselves as fluent English speakers who access meaning directly from English without word-by-word translation in Chinese, are in fact accessing Chinese subconsciously" said Dr Guillaume Thierry.
How the brain copes with two languages systems has been the subject of investigation by psycho-linguists for decades. Does one language system remain dormant while the other is active? Which language takes priority? Most tests devised so far involved both the languages studied and often involved translation from the first to the acquired language or vice versa. However, since they used both languages, the subjects were likely to realise that translation was the subject of study- this can affect the findings it also creates artificial experimental conditions compared to the real life experience of a native speaker of one language immersed in a foreign language environment.
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