title: Visual attention to words in different languages in bilinguals: a magnetoencephalographic study.
abstract: We recorded evoked magnetic fields from bilingual subjects while they were visually presented with words. The task was to count words in a target language when most of the words were in another language and there were also nontarget deviants in a third language. Our results indicate that in a multilingual visual environment there is a different need for attention to a nontarget language depending on whether the subject is attending to words in the subject's first (L1) or second (L2) language. When words in L2 are attended to, more effort appears to be devoted to words in the nontarget language than when words in L1 are attended to. In addition, attention to the nontarget language while counting words in L2 does not seem to depend on the age of acquisition of L2.
authors.affiliation: BioMag Laboratory, Engineering Centre, Helsinki University Central Hospital, P.O. Box 340, FIN-00029 HUS, Finland. pihko@biomag.hus.fi
authors.forename: Elina
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pihko
authors.forename: Vadim V
authors.initials: VV
authors.lastname: Nikulin
authors.forename: Risto J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Ilmoniemi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D015225:Magnetoencephalography; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019303:Multilingualism; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted