The left-lateralized N170 for visual specialization in advanced L2 Chinese learners

Abstract

Visual word recognition is crucial for improving reading skills in second language learners (L2Ls). It is unclear whether L2Ls who are native speakers of languages that use alphabetic scripts can recognize Chinese characters at an early stage of visual processing and if their visual specialization can reach a level of word recognition comparable to that of native Chinese speakers. This study aims to uncover the visual specialization mechanism of Chinese L2Ls. A delayed-color matching task was carried out with participants who were Chinese first language speakers (L1Ss) and advanced Chinese L2Ls with Indonesian as their first language. The results of the event-related potentials (ERPs) indicated that L2Ls exhibited significant visual specialization with a predominant distribution of the left-lateralized N170, along with some activation in the right hemisphere. These findings suggest that the early processing stage of Chinese characters by advanced L2Ls is similar to that of adult native speakers, although it is still influenced by their first language and its writing system.