Berger study suggests brain processes texting similarly to a second language
A team of researchers in the Reading Brains Lab of the Department of Education at Dartmouth College, led by senior thesis student Natalie Berger, set out to compare the brain signals elicited from texting with those emitted from processing of a second language. Their article “Do u txt? Event-related potentials to semantic anomalies in standard and texted English” was published in the June issue of Brain and Language.
Individuals use texted English to communicate electronically either via texting or instant messaging. Because texted English has a distinct lexicon and syntax from standard English, several linguists argue that it can stand on its own as a separate language.
The brain responds to thoughts and perceptions through electrophysiological signals, called event-related potentials, which can be measured with electroencephalography. Neuroscientists have determined a specific event-related potential component, which is elicited in response to both visual and auditory words. This signal component, the N400, is a large negative deflection usually observed 400 milliseconds after a stimulus is presented. The amplitude of the N400 is related to semantic processing, the processing of the meaning of words. To study how the brain does this, researchers employ a classic semantic mismatch paradigm in which participants are given sentences to read and asked to determine if the final word in each sentence makes sense.
Several studies have been conducted on bilingual individuals to compare N400s of bilingual brains to mismatched sentences in their native language with their responses to mismatched sentences in their second language. According to a recent study conducted by Van Petten & Luka, the amplitude of the N400 is a good indicator of the ease of “retrieving stored conceptual knowledge associated with a word.” In bilinguals, an N400 peaks later and lasts for a longer duration in response to second language stimuli than to native language stimuli.
Berger predicted that the brain processes semantic anomalies in texted English in the same way it processes them in standard English, by eliciting N400s in response to mismatched sentences. She further hypothesized that the N400s elicited by semantic anomalies in texted English would resemble those characteristic of second language processing in bilinguals.
The sixteen participants of the study were all “fluent” in texted English based on a standardized test, which measured their speed in translating a series of sentences constructed in texted English to standard English. Berger found that the participants were both slower and less accurate at making congruence judgments in texted English than in normal English indicating their greater fluency in standard English. As hypothesized, semantically incongruous terminal words in texted sentences elicited N400s. Moreover, these responses peaked later and lasted longer in the text condition, reflecting the results found in bilinguals.
It is too premature to state definitively that texted English is a distinct language from standard English. However, the Berger study suggests that semantic processing in texted English is similar to semantic processing in other second languages. In the future, texted English could be used to provide insights into the organization of semantic information in the bilingual brain.