Heritage-culture images disrupt immigrants' second-language processing through triggering first-language interference.

ABSTRACT: For bicultural individuals, visual cues of a setting's cultural expectations can activate associated representations, switching the frames that guide their judgments. Research suggests that cultural cues may affect judgments through automatic priming, but has yet to investigate consequences for linguistic performance. The present studies investigate the proposal that heritage-culture cues hinder immigrants' second-language processing by priming first-language structures. For Chinese immigrants in the United States, speaking to a Chinese (vs. Caucasian) face reduced their English fluency, but at the same time increased their social comfort, effects that did not occur for a comparison group of European Americans (study 1). Similarly, exposure to iconic symbols of Chinese (vs. American) cultu

SUBMITTER: Zhang S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3710819 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature