Spelling-sound consistency influences second-language age of acquisition effect: evidence for the arbitrary mapping hypothesis

ABSTRACT

The age at which people acquire a word influences word recognition, known as the age of acquisition (AoA) effect. In the first language (L1), AoA effects are widely found in various languages and experimental tasks. Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis proposes that AoA effects reflect the loss of network plasticity during the learning of mappings between input and output representations. It predicts that the AoA effect appears (or is larger) when the input-output mapping is arbitrary/inconsistent, relative to consistent input-output mapping. The present study examined how these predictions generalised to the second language (L2). We explored whether the L2 AoA effect was modulated by spelling-sound consistency in Chinese-English bilinguals, adopting a delayed word naming task. The results showed that the mapping consistency modulated the L2 AoA effect on the N170, P200 and N400 components. L2 AoA effect was insignificant in the consistent condition but was significant in the inconsistent condition: late-acquired words elicited larger N170, smaller P200, and larger N400 compared to early-acquired words. These findings suggest that L2 AoA effects occur in the spelling-sound connections, providing direct evidence for the Arbitrary Mapping Hypothesis.

KEYWORDS:

• Age of acquisition
• second language
• spelling-sound consistency
• ERP

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The materials, data, and analysis scripts are available through the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/we7af/?view_only = eda9d2faabb3483ea3642c45b5d517f9). None of the experiments were preregistered.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970976) for Baoguo Chen and a grant from the Science Foundation of Beijing Language and Culture University (supported by ‘the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities’) (21YBB27) for Jue Wang. This work was supported by the Major Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (17ZDA305) and the Project of School of Psychology at Beijing Language and Culture University (supported by 'the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities') (19YJ130004) for Xin Jiang.

Notes on contributors

Jue Wang

Jue Wang is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Psychology, Beijing Language and Culture University. Her research is associated with the eye movements during Chinese reading and L2 word processing and learning.

Xin Jiang

Xin Jiang is a professor in the School of Psychology, Beijing Language and Culture University. Her research focuses on the Chinese cognitive processing, reading psychology, and L2 word processing and learning.

Baoguo Chen

Baoguo Chen is a professor in the Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University. He mainly conducts research on control mechanism of language switching, L2 word processing and learning, and L2 semantic and syntactic processing.