Phillip J. Holcomb

Can grammatical gender in a bilingual's first language shape gender-stereotype processing in a second language? Spanish (L1)-English (L2) bilinguals (n = 28) and English monolinguals (n = 28) completed an event-related potential (ERP) priming task in which English pronouns (SHE/HE) followed gender-stereotyped English nouns, half of which had gender-marked Spanish translation equivalents (e.g., NURSE 'enfermera/o', SURGEON 'cirujana/o'), and half unmarked translation equivalents (e.g., SINGER 'cantante', JANITOR 'conserje'). Both groups showed asymmetric stereotype priming: male pronouns elicited a larger N400 for incongruent than congruent primes, whereas female pronouns elicited a larger P300 for incongruent than congruent primes. Crucially, only bilinguals showed modulation by Spanish grammatical gender marking: the N400 effect for male pronouns was larger for primes with gender-marked than unmarked Spanish translations. These findings provide neural evidence that grammatical gender in a bilingual's first language can influence gender-stereotype processing in a second language, linking cross-linguistic activation to social cognition.

Fingerspelling skill is a leading predictor of reading ability in deaf children and adults who use American Sign Language (ASL), potentially because fingerspelling provides an additional visual-manual orthographic code for representing print. In the current study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate N170 responses to printed English words, fingerspelled words, and ASL signs. We analyzed prime stimuli from Lee et al. (2025) in which 24 skilled deaf adult readers completed a go/no-go semantic categorization task for printed word targets preceded by different prime types: printed English words, fingerspelled words, or ASL signs. We replicated the bilateral (rather than left-lateralized) N170 to printed words for skilled deaf readers, but the N170 to fingerspelled words was larger in the right hemisphere. ASL signs elicited bilateral N170 activity. We speculate that early acquisition of fingerspelling could alter the neural tuning for print in deaf ASL-English bilinguals by supporting right hemisphere processing.

A paradigm that has been widely used in cognitive science to examine questions about language production has produced an as‐yet‐unresolved conundrum in the findings of several event‐related potential (ERP) studies. Using the picture–word interference (PWI) task, these studies have found behavioral evidence of interference effects (i.e., slower and/or less accurate responses) but ERP evidence of typical priming (i.e., smaller N400s) when to‐be‐named pictures are presented with semantically related words. To address these seemingly contradictory results, we performed a semantic PWI experiment with two modifications from the typical design. First, we implemented a novel behavior‐contingent analysis of semantically related word–picture pairs in which single‐trial ERP data were reaveraged for word–picture pairs that either showed a facilitation pattern or an inhibition pattern (faster or slower RTs for related than unrelated pairs). Second, we extended the ERP analysis epoch to latencies not typically analyzed in previous studies due to concerns about speech artifact. In the behavioral contingent averaged ERPs, the “facilitation bins” produced typical priming in early (200–400 ms) and late (400–600 ms) N400 epochs, while the “inhibition bins” produced reversed priming (greater negativity for related than unrelated prime words) in the late N400 epoch. In addition, after correcting for speech artifact, we observed reversed priming for the semantic condition in a later epoch (700–1200 ms). Together, these results help resolve the apparent conflict between neural and behavioral responses in the PWI paradigm and suggest a way forward in using response‐contingent averaging of ERP data in language production.

In a typical picture-word interference (PWI) task, picture-naming is faster/more accurate when the preceding prime words are identical to the picture name, but slower/less accurate when they are semantically related. However, ERPs time-locked to picture onset typically only show priming (facilitation) effects for both related prime types (smaller negativities compared to unrelated prime words). We replicated these effects and then conducted a novel behavior-contingent analysis for the semantic condition in which single-trial ERP data were re-averaged for word-picture pairs that either showed a facilitation pattern or an inhibition pattern (faster or slower RTs for related than unrelated pairs). The “facilitation bins” produced typical priming in early (200-400ms) and late (400-600ms) N400 epochs, while the “inhibition bins” produced reversed priming (greater negativity for related than unrelated prime words) in the late N400 epoch. In addition, after correcting for speech artifact, we observed reversed priming for the semantic condition in a later epoch (700-1200ms) that overlapped with the naming response (for both bin types). Overall, these results help resolve the apparent conflict between neural and behavioral responses in the PWI paradigm. Further, the pattern of results suggests that competition between lexical items can occur during both lexico-semantic activation and later speech production processes, lending some support to both lexical selection and response centered accounts of PWI effects.

The current paper reports the results of two ERP experiments that investigated the extent to which syntactic information can be extracted from the parafovea. We used the reading version of the flankers task in which participants had to classify foveal target words as either being a noun or an adjective. In Experiment 1, targets were flanked by either syntactically congruent or incongruent words (e.g., noun noun noun vs. adjective noun adjective), or were embedded in a sequence of words that was either grammatical or ungrammatical (e.g., adjective noun verb vs. verb noun adjective). Experiment 2 employed the same stimuli as the latter condition, with participants now tasked to judge the word sequence as being grammatically correct or not. Results showed a significant reduction in N400 amplitude for both the syntactically congruent and syntactically grammatical conditions in Experiment 1, and for syntactic grammaticality when making sentence judgements in Experiment 2. In the second experiment, a syntactically grammatical word sequence could be reliably decoded starting around 500 milliseconds post-stimulus onset. These results indicate that skilled readers can extract and process syntactic information from multiple words in a short timeframe and that syntactic categories retrieved from individual words (i.e., parts-of-speech) are rapidly integrated into a sentence-level representation.

Grainger et al. (2006) were the first to use ERP masked priming to explore the differing contributions of phonological and orthographic representations to visual word processing. Here we adapted their paradigm to examine word processing in deaf readers. We investigated whether reading-matched deaf and hearing readers (n = 36) exhibit different ERP effects associated with the activation of orthographic and phonological codes during word processing. In a visual masked priming paradigm, participants performed a go/no-go categorization task (detect an occasional animal word). Critical target words were preceded by orthographically-related (transposed letter – TL) or phonologically-related (pseudohomophone – PH) masked non-word primes were contrasted with the same target words preceded by letter substitution (control) non-words primes. Hearing readers exhibited typical N250 and N400 priming effects (greater negativity for control compared to TL or PH primed targets), and the TL and PH priming effects did not differ. For deaf readers, the N250 PH priming effect was later (250–350 ms), and they showed a reversed N250 priming effect for TL primes in this time window. The N400 TL and PH priming effects did not differ between groups. For hearing readers, those with better phonological and spelling skills showed larger early N250 PH and TL priming effects (150–250 ms). For deaf readers, those with better phonological skills showed a larger reversed TL priming effect in the late N250 window. We speculate that phonological knowledge modulates how strongly deaf readers rely on whole-word orthographic representations and/or the mapping from sublexical to lexical representations.

Letter recognition plays an important role in reading and follows different phases of processing, from early visual feature detection to the access of abstract letter representations. Deaf ASL–English bilinguals experience orthography in two forms: English letters and fingerspelling. However, the neurobiological nature of fingerspelling representations, and the relationship between the two orthographies, remains unexplored. We examined the temporal dynamics of single English letter and ASL fingerspelling font processing in an unmasked priming paradigm with centrally presented targets for 200 ms preceded by 100 ms primes. Event-related brain potentials were recorded while participants performed a probe detection task. Experiment 1 examined English letter-to-letter priming in deaf signers and hearing non-signers. We found that English letter recognition is similar for deaf and hearing readers, extending previous findings with hearing readers to unmasked presentations. Experiment 2 examined priming effects between English letters and ASL fingerspelling fonts in deaf signers only. We found that fingerspelling fonts primed both fingerspelling fonts and English letters, but English letters did not prime fingerspelling fonts, indicating a priming asymmetry between letters and fingerspelling fonts. We also found an N400-like priming effect when the primes were fingerspelling fonts which might reflect strategic access to the lexical names of letters. The studies suggest that deaf ASL–English bilinguals process English letters and ASL fingerspelling differently and that the two systems may have distinct neural representations. However, the fact that fingerspelling fonts can prime English letters suggests that the two orthographies may share abstract representations to some extent.