The DOI matches its Crossref record; 31 of the 41 references it cites were found in a registry or an index, and 10 are not checked yet; none of the 20 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.
Chinese–English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese
Open accessAbstract
Bilingual individuals have been shown to access their native language while reading in or listening to their other language. However, it is unknown what type of mental representation (e.g., sound or spelling) they retrieve. Here, using event-related brain potentials, we demonstrate unconscious access to the sound form of Chinese words when advanced Chinese–English bilinguals read or listen to English words. Participants were asked to decide whether or not English words presented in pairs were related in meaning; they were unaware of the fact that some of the unrelated word pairs concealed either a sound or a spelling repetition in their Chinese translations. Whereas spelling repetition in Chinese translations had no effect, concealed sound repetition significantly modulated event-related brain potentials. These results suggest that processing second language activates the sound, but not the spelling, of native language translations.
Checked 2026-10-06 · 10 references not checked yet
Overview
AI snapshot
Written from the paper’s full text.
TL;DR
Using ERPs, this study shows that advanced Chinese–English bilinguals unconsciously access the sound, but not the spelling, of Chinese translations when reading or listening to English words. This cross-language phonological activation appeared in N400 modulation despite no behavioral awareness.
Key findings
- In reading, hidden sound repetition in Chinese translations reduced N400 amplitude in Chinese–English bilinguals between 310 and 420 ms (all p < 0.01), whereas hidden spelling repetition had no effect (p > 0.1); the condition-by-group interaction was F(1,28) = 3.91, p < 0.05.
- In listening, the same qualitative pattern occurred: implicit sound repetition reduced mean ERP amplitude between 360 and 450 ms (all p < 0.05), spelling repetition had no effect, and the condition-by-group interaction was F(1,28) = 4.17, p < 0.05.
- Behavioral data showed no cross-language interactions in bilinguals: semantic relatedness affected reaction times in reading (F(3,42) = 18.38, p < 0.001) and listening (F(3,42) = 23.98, p < 0.001), but Chinese spelling or sound repetition did not (all p > 0.1).
- Native English controls showed no effect of hidden Chinese repetition, while native Chinese controls showed explicit sound-repetition effects and, in reading only, a spelling-repetition effect.
Methods
- Ninety participants took part: 30 native English speakers, 30 native Chinese speakers, and 30 Chinese–English bilinguals. Bilinguals were first exposed to English at age 12, had IELTS scores of 6 or 6.5, and had lived in the United Kingdom for a mean of 21.3 ± 3.25 months; groups were matched for age 20–27, education, and right-handedness.
- Participants performed an implicit priming semantic-relatedness task with 180 word pairs presented in two blocks of 90. English words were presented visually or auditorily; unrelated pairs concealed either sound or spelling repetition in their Chinese translations. Participants judged whether the second word was related in meaning to the first and were debriefed afterward.
- ERP data were recorded from 64 Ag/AgCl electrodes. Analyses used repeated-measures ANOVA with semantic relatedness, character repetition, electrode, and group, with Greenhouse–Geisser correction where applicable, plus pairwise millisecond-by-millisecond comparisons significant at p < 0.05 for >30 ms over at least six clustered electrodes.
Limitations
- The paper does not include a dedicated limitations section; it states that future studies with different language combinations and levels of proficiency will shed more light on the conclusions.
- Evident from the design: participants were advanced Chinese–English bilinguals (IELTS 6/6.5; mean 21.3 months in the UK), so findings may not generalize to other proficiency levels or language pairs.
- Evident from the design: the dissociation relies on Chinese having no systematic spelling–sound correspondence; the same sound-versus-spelling separation may not hold for alphabetic bilingual pairs with strong orthographic and phonological overlap.
Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
31 Own result · 16 Own method · 15 Own interpretation · 11 Not checked yet · 2 No basis given
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“When comparing word pairs that featured a spelling repetition in Chinese translations with unrelated word pairs, no difference was found in either Chinese-English bilinguals or Chinese control participants (all values of p Ͼ 0.1).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Listening to and reading words yielded the same qualitative results in bilinguals
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“No effect of repetition in Chinese was found in this group whether through spelling or sound repetition (all values of p Ͼ 0.1).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Results
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“English control participants (F (3,42) ϭ 9.02; p Ͻ 0.001) and Chinese-English bilinguals (F (3,42) ϭ 23.98; p Ͻ 0.001) all displayed the effect by semantic relatedness on reaction times.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Results
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“No effects of repetition in Chinese were observed in either of the two groups (all values of p Ͼ 0.1).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Results
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“However, no effects were found for spelling repetition via translation in L1.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The analysis of the ERP data revealed priming effects that were invisible in the behavioral data of bilingual participants.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In the listening experiment, a semantic relatedness effect was found in all three groups of participants (Fig. 2 B).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Listening to and reading words yielded the same qualitative results in bilinguals
plaincorrelationaln = 3 ·- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Semantically related word pairs yielded faster reaction times in the Chinese-English bilinguals and both the control groups.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Behavioral results show no evidence of cross-language interactions.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Results
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In the Chinese control participants, in particular, auditory presentation of Chinese words did not trigger spelling repetition priming, contrasting with the significant effect of spelling repetition in the reading experiment.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Listening to and reading words yielded the same qualitative results in bilinguals
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
- It may state two separate claims as one. 17
- The quote only partly states this claim. 1
- Probably not a substantial claim. 14
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The N400 modulation was of greater magnitude and lasted longer for semantic relatedness than implicit sound repetition.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The Chinese-English bilinguals (F (3,42) ϭ 5.23; p Ͻ 0.05) and Chinese control participants (F (3,42) ϭ 12.77; p Ͻ 0.001) showed the same pattern of semantic effect (all values of p Ͻ 0.05).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Listening to and reading words yielded the same qualitative results in bilinguals
plainn = 3 ·- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
The quote only partly states this claim.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Chinese control participants who read Chinese words showed a priming effect of explicit sound repetition very similar in magnitude and duration to that found in Chinese-English bilinguals reading English words, but smaller and less durable than the semantic priming effects.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A result the paper reports from its own data — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“because we found evidence for the activation of L1 sound forms but not spelling representations in both the listening and the reading experiments.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Participants were controlled for age (20 -27 years), level of education (undergraduate and master students), and handedness (right) across groups.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
plainn = 90- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In the present study, for the first time, we specify the nature of native language information-orthography or phonology-that is spontaneously accessed when bilingual individuals read or listen to their second language.”
- Also stated in: § Discussion · plain
“The finding that bilingual participants activate the sound, but not the spelling, of translations in their native language specifies the nature of cross-language interaction in bilinguals and provides a framework to interpret functional neuroimaging of language in the brain.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
- Also stated in: § Discussion · plain
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Although the relatedness judgment task guaranteed access to meaning, testing participants exclusively in English prevented artificial coactivation of Chinese.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Materials and Methods
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“This ERP priming profile is consistent with that of the classical N400 known to index semantic integration (Kutas andHillyard, 1980, 1984), but also phonological and orthographic priming during word comprehension (Grainger et al., 2006;Holcomb and Grainger, 2006).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Kutas andHillyard, 1980, 1984
- Not checked yetcites Grainger et al., 2006
- Not checked yetcites Holcomb and Grainger, 2006
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“In all conditions, participants generated Ͼ96% corrected translations, and there were no significant differences between conditions.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: unclear — It is unclear whether the paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper states this without a source or data behind it here, so there is nothing to check it against. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Although previous studies have failed to fully dissociate these two factors because of the intrinsic links between spelling and sound in alphabetic writing systems”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“There were no significant differences in the number of phonemes in pairwise comparisons between conditions (all values of p Ͻ 0.1).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Eye blinks were mathematically corrected, and remaining artifacts were manually dismissed.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it. It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“Interactions involving the electrode factor were controlled by using within-condition vector normalization (McCarthy and Wood, 1985).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > ERP data analysis.
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites McCarthy and Wood, 1985
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“which suggests that lexical access in Chinese spontaneously activates phonological codes and that it interferes with semantic decision processes (Frost, 1998).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Frost, 1998
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“However, despite an overall increase in response latency and error rates compared with native English participants, Chinese-English bilinguals displayed a “native-like” pattern of performance without obvious signs of L1 activation when processing L2 words.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“To avoid possible eye movements during the reading experiment, no English word had Ͼ11 letters and all Chinese translations featured two Chinese characters.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“No word was repeated in either of the studies.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“These results suggest that processing second language activates the sound, but not the spelling, of native language translations.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Abstract
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
In the paper
“One drawback of previous studies is that using words from two languages in the same experiment creates an artificial bilingual context, in which bilinguals are likely to activate lexical information from both their languages in parallel (Grosjean, 1998).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Introduction
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Grosjean, 1998
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Although the relatedness judgment task guaranteed access to meaning, testing participants exclusively in English prevented artificial coactivation of Chinese.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Materials and Methods
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Any effect of spelling and/or sound repetition in Chinese would then reveal implicit access to the native language during second language processing.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Materials and Methods
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: fails — The paper may give no reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper may give no reason why it holds.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Motivated by the theoretical viewpoint that the sound of words plays an important role in visual word recognition (Frost, 1998;Jared et al., 1999), a few studies have attempted to determine the magnitude of phonological activation in L1 during L2 word processing.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Introduction
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Frost, 1998
- Not checked yetcites Jared et al., 1999
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“Response sides were fully counterbalanced between blocks and participants.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“There was a minimum of 30 valid epochs per condition in every subject.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
In the paper
“The 180 word pairs used were controlled across experimental conditions for lexical frequency, word concreteness, average numbers of letters and phonemes (Coltheart, 1981), and the level of semantic relatedness as rated by independent groups of native English and Chinese speakers.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Participants.
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Coltheart, 1981
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The evidence of cross-language interactions reported here implies that “language-specific” cortical activations extend well beyond the level of conceptual processing because the processing of second language words appears to automatically trigger activation of native language representations at lexical and possibly sublexical levels.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
hedgeddirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
What the paper did — it cites no source for this, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The present study solved this problem by concealing fully dissociated spelling and sound repetitions in Chinese translations while orienting participants to the meaning of words presented exclusively in English.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plain- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
None of the sources cited for this claim have been checked yet.
In the paper
“Functional neuroimaging studies have often reported activation in shared or partially overlapping brain regions when comparing native with second language processing (Kim et al., 1997;Chee et al., 2000Chee et al., , 2003;;Tan et al., 2003).”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
What the sources say
- Not checked yetcites Kim et al., 1997
- Not checked yetcites Chee et al., 2000
- Not checked yetcites Tan et al., 2003
plaincorrelational- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: fails — The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
Probably not a substantial claim. The paper’s conclusions may not depend on it.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The finding that bilingual participants activate the sound, but not the spelling, of translations in their native language specifies the nature of cross-language interaction in bilinguals and provides a framework to interpret functional neuroimaging of language in the brain.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
A conclusion the paper draws from its own results — it cites no other source for it, so there is none to check. The quote shows it is in the paper.
In the paper
“The dissociation between access to spelling and sound representations in the native language established here not only provides a new interpretational basis to explain inconsistencies in previous studies of bilingual language comprehension but also affords a novel perspective on neuroimaging evidence that studies that mixed these two factors could not shed light on.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
plaindirect- Asserted: passes — The authors put it forward as true.
- Checkable: passes — It can be checked against evidence.
- Load-bearing: passes — The paper’s conclusions depend on it.
- Based: passes — The paper gives a reason why it holds.
It may state two separate claims as one.
The paper relies on this without support.
The nature of the information (spelling, sound, or meaning) accessed during cross-language activation is undetermined.
“Although evidence of nontarget language activation has been found during reading (Dijkstra et al., 1999(Dijkstra et al., , 2000b)), listening (Spivey and Marian, 1999), and speech production (Colome, 2001;Jared and Kroll, 2001;Jared and Szucs, 2002), the nature of the information (e.g., spelling, sound, or meaning) that is accessed is undetermined.”
The paper relies on this without support.
Chinese features no systematic correspondence between spelling and sound.
“Chinese, unlike English and other alphabetic languages, features no systematic correspondence between spelling and sound, and vice versa.”
The authors state this as an assumption.
The repetition effect in native Chinese control participants can serve as a guideline to interpret effects in the bilingual group.
“We used the repetition effect in the latter group as a guideline to interpret effects in the bilingual group.”
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
“This idea is fully consistent with our behavioral results: Spelling repetition had no effect in native Chinese control participants and reaction times were significantly longer for sound repetition in both the reading and the listening experiments.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Results
“With regards to error rates, unrelated word pairs yielded significantly higher error rates than word pairs featuring a spelling repetition in Chinese ( p Ͻ 0.05), and no other difference was significant (all values of p Ͼ 0.1).”
Rated minor: it would not touch a result — a value no result rests on, a p-value that stays on the same side of the significance level, or a conflict that is clerical, resolved elsewhere in the paper, or outside its own findings.
In the paper
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Discussion
“Semantically related word pairs yielded faster reaction times in the Chinese-English bilinguals and both the control groups.”
§ Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive Chinese-English Bilinguals Reading English Hear Chinese > Results
“However, the effect on reaction times was not attributable to semantically related words eliciting shorter RTs, but rather to sound repetition in Chinese eliciting longer RTs compared with other conditions (Fig. 1 A) (all values of p Ͻ 0.01).”
Citations
Cites
Reading Senseless Sentences: Brain Potentials Reflect Semantic Incongruity
Marta Kutas, A., & Hillyard, S. A. (1980) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.7350657 · Cited by 5,029
The MRC Psycholinguistic Database
Coltheart, M. (1981) · The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A · doi:10.1080/14640748108400805 · Cited by 2,506
Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association
Marta Kutas, A., & Hillyard, S. A. (1984) · Nature · doi:10.1038/307161a0 · Cited by 2,220
McCarthy, G., & Wood, C. C. (1985) · Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology/Evoked Potentials Section · doi:10.1016/0168-5597(85)90015-2 · Cited by 1,765
Distinct cortical areas associated with native and second languages
Kim, K. H. S., Relkin, N. R., Lee, K.-M., & Hirsch, J. (1997) · Nature · doi:10.1038/40623 · Cited by 1,071
Studying bilinguals: Methodological and conceptual issues
Grosjean, F. (1998) · Bilingualism: Language and Cognition · doi:10.1017/s136672899800025x · Cited by 996
Orthographic Neighborhood Effects in Bilingual Word Recognition
van Heuven, W. J. B., Dijkstra, T., & Grainger, J. (1998) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1006/jmla.1998.2584 · Cited by 803
Brain potentials reveal unconscious translation during foreign language comprehension
Thierry, G., & Wu, Y. J. (2007) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0609927104 · Cited by 728
Self-citationToward a strong phonological theory of visual word recognition: True issues and false trails.
Frost, R. (1998) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.123.1.71 · Cited by 724
Recognition of Cognates and Interlingual Homographs: The Neglected Role of Phonology
Dijkstra, T., Jonathan Grainger, B., & van Heuven, W. J. B. (1999) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1006/jmla.1999.2654 · Cited by 696
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., & Luk, G. (2012) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2012.03.001 · Cited by 1,386
Translanguaging: origins and development from school to street and beyond
Lewis, G., Jones, B., & Baker, C. (2012) · Educational Research and Evaluation · doi:10.1080/13803611.2012.718488 · Cited by 924
Is bilingualism associated with enhanced executive functioning in adults? A meta-analytic review.
Lehtonen, M., Soveri, A., Laine, A., Järvenpää, J., de Bruin, A., & Antfolk, J. (2018) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/bul0000142 · Cited by 711
Juggling Two Languages in One Mind
Kroll, J. F., Dussias, P. E., BOGULSKI, C. A., & Kroff, J. R. V. (2012) · The Psychology of learning and motivation/The psychology of learning and motivation · doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-394393-4.00007-8 · Cited by 337
Bilingualism and working memory capacity: A comprehensive meta-analysis
Grundy, J. G., & Timmer, K. (2016) · Second language Research · doi:10.1177/0267658316678286 · Cited by 305
Metadata
- Authors
- Wu, Y. J., & Thierry, G.
- Affiliations
- Bangor University (GB)
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2010-06-02
- Volume
- 30
- Issue
- 22
- Pages
- 7646-7651
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6632379
- OpenAlex
- W2047310668
- Semantic Scholar
- 32b4f200a4d7c9ca473c4301b0207537b03e1e85
- Cited by
- 307
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 20 · 2019: 33 · 2018: 47 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 15 · 2012: 20
- FWCI
- 8.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Economic and Social Research Council (ES/E024556/1)
- FP7 Ideas: European Research Council (209704)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
- Keywords
- Chinese-English bilinguals, second language reading, event-related potentials, word recognition, semantic relatedness judgment, cross-linguistic interference
- MeSH terms
- Acoustic Stimulation, Adult, Analysis of Variance, Electroencephalography, Evoked Potentials, Auditory, Female, Hearing, Humans, Language Tests, Male, Phonetics, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Reading, Semantics, Translations, Vocabulary, Multilingualism, Comprehension, Asian People, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
A language model drew the claims from the paper on 2026-10-06, under version 3 of the claim definition (model deepseek-v4.1-flash, prompt extract-v3).
A second model labelled each claim on 2026-10-06 (model jev-1.13-20260917, definition revision gold-guideline-v0.2).
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
