Paper in Frontiers in Psychology

We are happy to announce that our paper “Vowel perception in multilingual speakers: ERP evidence from Polish, English and Norwegian” is already available online. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1270743/full

The study reported in the paper looked at how multilingual participants processed sounds in their first language (L1), second language (L2), and third or later language (L3/Ln). To investigate this issue, we had a group of trilingual Polish-English-Norwegian participants who listened to vowel pairs in the three languages. With the aid of the EEG method, we measured their brain activity when they were exposed to these sounds, and simultaneously watched a cartoon as their main distraction task.

The results revealed different neural responses depending on the processed language. There were significant differences between L2 English and L3/Ln Norwegian, as well as between L1 Polish and L3/Ln Norwegian. In L3/Ln Norwegian, the brain’s response was weaker when compared to L2 English and L1 Polish. This suggests that when people are listening to auditory stimuli in a second language (L2) versus a third or later language (L3/Ln), it affects the neural mechanisms associated with sound processing.

The research was conducted in cooperation between Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland and UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. The authors are Hanna Kędzierska, Karolina Rataj, Anna Balas, Zuzanna Cal, Chloe Castle and Magdalena Wrembel.