We investigated how verbal labels affect object categorization in bilinguals. In English, most nouns do not provide linguistic clues to their categories (an exception is sunflower), whereas in Chinese, some nouns provide category information morphologically (e.g., 鸵鸟- ostrich and 知更鸟- robin have the morpheme鸟- bird in their Chinese names), while some nouns do not (e.g., 企鹅- penguin and 鸽子- pigeon). We examined the effect of Chinese word structure on bilinguals’ categorization processes in two ERP experiments. Chinese–English bilinguals and English monolinguals judged the membership of atypical (e.g., ostrich, penguin) vs. typical (e.g., robin, pigeon) pictorial (Experiment 1) and English word (Experiment 2) exemplars of categories (e.g., bird). English monolinguals showed typicality effects in RT data, and in the N300 and N400 of ERP data, regardless of whether the object name had a category cue in Chinese. In contrast, Chinese–English bilinguals showed a larger typicality effect for objects without category cues in their name than objects with cues, even when they were tested in English. These results demonstrate that linguistic information in bilinguals’ L1 has an effect on their L2 categorization processes. The findings are explained using the label-feedback hypothesis.

Lupyan's (2012) label-feedback hypothesis proposes that linguistic labels affect our conceptual and perceptual representations through top-down feedback. We investigated whether such representations in bilinguals are influenced by labels from both of their languages by examining the effect of Chinese word structure on picture perception in Chinese–English bilinguals. A visual-oddball task with ERP was used. Pictures of four birds were used as standards and deviants. The robin-ostrich pair shared a category cue in their Chinese names (like blackbird in English), and the pigeon-penguin pair did not. In Chinese–English bilinguals who were new to Canada, the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) elicited by deviant stimuli was significantly larger for pairs without category cues than pairs with cues, but, in long-stay bilinguals and English monolinguals, the vMMN was similar for the two pairs. These results demonstrate that object perception is influenced by the labels in both of a bilingual's languages.

A 50ms prime duration is often adopted in both L1-L2 and L2-L1 directions in the cross-language priming paradigm. It is unknown how aware bilinguals are of the briefly presented primes of different scripts; and whether the degree of awareness of L1 and L2 primes is at a similar level. Kouider and Dupoux's (2004) proposal of partial awareness suggests that 50ms English primes were sufficient to make a semantic interpretation. It is unclear whether this is the case when processing one's L2 or a different script. Experiment 1 was designed to measure the comparable prime durations for semantic interpretation of Chinese primes vs. English primes. Experiment 2 tested whether partial awareness of primes would cause priming asymmetry. Our findings demonstrate that a 50ms prime duration gave rise to different degrees of semantic activation in different scripts and L1/L2. However, increasing prime duration on L2 primes did not produce L2-L1 priming.

This study compares the development and use of evaluative expressions in the English narratives elicited from 80 Chinese–English bilinguals and 80 American monolingual peers at four ages – five, eight, ten, and young adults – using the wordless picture book Frog, where are you? (Mayer, 1969). Results revealed both similarities and differences between monolingual and bilingual groups. On the one hand, regardless of bilingual status, there is a clear age-related growth in the development and use of evaluative expressions. On the other hand, bilingual children in our study differed from monolingual children in the quantity and quality of evaluative clauses used. The results are discussed with respect to linguistic and cultural differences between English and Chinese.