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Review article: The imaging of what in the multilingual mind?

University of Groningen, C.L.J.de.Bot{at}rug.nl

In this review article it is argued that while the number of neuro-imaging (NI) studies on multilingual processing has exploded over the last few years, the contribution of such studies to enhance our understanding of the process of multilingual processing has not been very substantial. There are problems on various levels, which include the following issues: ownership of the field of NI and multilingualism, whether relevant background characteristics are assessed adequately, whether we consider variation as a problem or a source of information, what NI tells us about multilingual development, whether the native speaker is the norm in NI research, the added value of NI data, what information NI provides, and what the contribution of NI research is to theories about the multilingual brain. The conclusion is that as yet NI has not fulfilled the high expectations raised by the technical progress and the large number of studies that have been carried out.

Key Words: Neuro-imaging • multilingualism • ERP • research methodology • psycholinguistics • dynamic systems theory

Second Language Research, Vol. 24, No. 1, 111-133 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0267658307083034


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