• MALSORI
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• no.57
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• pp.59-72
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to see whether Korean-English bilinguals' semantic systems of Korean and English are shared or separated between the two languages. In a series of picture-word interference tasks, participants were required to name the pictures in Korean or in English with distractor words printed either in Korean or English. The distractor words were any of identical, semantically related, or neutral to the picture. The response time of naming was facilitated when distractor words were semantically identical for both same- and different-language pairs. But this facilitation effect was stronger when naming was produced in their native language, which in this case was Korean. Also, inhibitory effect was found when the picture and its distractor word were semantically related in both same- and different-language paired conditions. From these results it can be concluded that semantic representations of Korean and English may not be entirely but partly overlapping in bilinguals.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.3-10
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• 2010

The present study aims to investigate neural activations according to the level of code switching in English proficient bilinguals and to find the relationship between the performance of language switching and proficiency level using ERPs (event-related potentials). First, when comparing high-proficient (HP) with low-proficient (LP) bilingual performance in a native language environment, the activation level of N2 was observed to be higher in the HP group than in the LP group, but only under two conditions: 1) the language switching (between-language) condition known as indexing attention of code switching and 2) the inhibition of current language for L1. Another effect of N400 can be shown in both groups only in the language non-switching (within-language) condition. This effect suggests that both groups completed the semantic acceptability task well in their native language environment without the burden of language switching, irrespective of high or low performance. The latencies of N400 are only about 100ms earlier in the HP group than in the LP group. This difference can be interpreted as facilitation of the given task. These results suggest that HP showed the differential activation in inhibitory system for L1 in switching condition of L1-to-L2 to be contrary to inactivation of inhibitory system for the LP group. Despite the absence of an N400 effect at the given task in both groups, differential latencies between the peaks were attributed to the differences of efficiency in semantic processing.

• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.31-50
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• 2019

The present study is designed to investigate the effect of perceptive, emotional and semantic distinctiveness on retrieval-induced forgetting(RIF). Experiment 1 was designed to construct a category and category list for RIF experimental paradigm and to investigate the effects of perceptual distinctness on retrieval-induced forgetting. It was used for the list consisting of the six categories and six words in each category list. In controlled conditions, all the stimuli were presented in black and Gothic. In contrast, perceptual distinctiveness conditions, half of the category list were presented in red and Gungseoche. RIF was observed in all conditions. Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the effects of semantic and emotional distinctiveness on retrieval-induced forgetting. In neutral conditions, adjectives related to items were added. In the emotional distinctiveness condition, half of the items in the category were manipulated in such a way as to add the negative adjectives. In the semantic distinctiveness condition, half of the items in the category were manipulated in such a way as to add the inappropriate adjective. As a result, RIF occurred in the neutral condition, but RIF did not occur in both the emotional discrimination condition and the semantic discrimination. These results suggest the possibility that the RIF will not occur when the distinctiveness occurs within a categorical relationship.