Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Speech and Language
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1392788
This article is part of the Research Topic Acquisition, Processing, and Maintenance of a New Language: Crosslinguistic Perspectives on Sequential Bi/Multilingualism View all 3 articles

The Left-Lateralized N170 for Visual Specialization in Advanced L2 Chinese Learners

Provisionally accepted
  • 1 Institute of Chinese Language and Culture Education, Huaqiao University, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China
  • 2 Chinese Language and Culture College, Huaqiao Univer, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China
  • 3 Jilin Railway Technology College, Jilin, Jilin Province, China
  • 4 College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Visual word recognition is crucial for improving reading skills in second language learners (L2Ls). It is unclear whether L2Ls who are native speakers of languages that use alphabetic scripts can recognize Chinese characters at an early stage of visual processing and if their visual specialization can reach a level of word recognition comparable to that of native Chinese speakers. This study aims to uncover the visual specialization mechanism of Chinese L2Ls. A delayed-color matching task was carried out with participants who were Chinese first language speakers (L1Ss) and advanced Chinese L2Ls with Indonesian as their first language. The results of the event-related potentials (ERPs) indicated that L2Ls exhibited significant visual specialization with a predominant distribution of the left-lateralized N170, along with some activation in the right hemisphere. These findings suggest that the early processing stage of Chinese characters by advanced L2Ls is similar to that of adult native speakers, although it is still influenced by their first language and its writing system.

    Keywords: Chinese characters, N170, Visual specialization, L2Ls, High proficiency

    Received: 28 Feb 2024; Accepted: 14 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Hao, Guo, Zhu and BAI. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Bing BAI, College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, Fujian Province, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.