Monica Munoz - US grants

With Major Research Instrumentation support, Dr. Anna B. Cieslicka and her collaborators will purchase a Biosemi Electroencephalography/Event Related Potentials (EEG/ERP) Active Two Acquisition System for the Psychology and Communication Department at Texas A&M International University (TAMIU), a Hispanic serving institution in South Texas. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been critical in investigating language representation and processing since they provide a unique opportunity to "watch" language processing as it unfolds in real-time. The instrument provides a noninvasive technique for measuring electrical activity in the brain, localizing it in both time and space. This is recorded through a set of sensors which are placed on the surface of the scalp.

The participating researchers are all active researchers in the study of bilingualism and bilingual cognitive processing. Five collaborative research projects are proposed. Project 1 will explore hemispheric asymmetries (differences between the activation of the left and right cerebral hemispheres) in processing salient (highly familiar) and nonsalient (less familiar) meanings of idiomatic expressions by Spanish-English bilinguals. Findings from PI's earlier research will be verified with greater accuracy due to the superiority of the electroencephalography (EEG) methodology. Project 2 will investigate code-switching in bilinguals and explore how the factors of the direction of switching and language dominance affect fluent bilinguals' comprehension. A second goal of this project will be to address idiom decomposability, or the extent to which idioms are stored and processed as single linguistic units or assembled through linguistic and semantic analysis of their individual constituents. Overall, data obtained from Projects 1 and 2 will allow the PI and collaborators to start a pioneering research program into the electrophysiological correlates of bilingual figurative comprehension. Project 3 will examine the effects of valence and arousal on the mental representation of emotion words. The project will address the ways in which emotion words are distinct from each other, and how valence (positive versus negative) and arousal (low versus high) influence the overall representation of these words in human memory. This work will have implications for the development of methods of learning different word classes and also for aiding memory improvement techniques by means of using emotion-related stimuli. Project 4 will further explore differences in the processing of positively and negatively valenced words in bilinguals' native and nonnative languages and will additionally explore the extent to which individual differences factors (e.g., perspective taking) modulate emotional word processing. Project 5 will address the question of whether linguistic perceivers rely on world knowledge and lexical information to comprehend linguistic statements. Using mono- and bilingual speakers, it will apply an EEG/ERP paradigm in combination with eye-tracking, to investigate whether the bilingual speakers' brain responses engage similar neural structures to understand ironic statements in both languages. This research will further understanding of the neural circuitries underlying language comprehension abilities in bilingual speakers.

The research and training program enabled by the equipment will foster intramural and extramural collaborations and increase TAMIU's competitiveness for extramural research funding and publishing. The instrumentation will provide training and access to mainstream electrophysiological methodologies to students that are historically underrepresented in psychology/ neuropsychology doctoral programs. In addition, the requested equipment will improve the university's research infrastructure by advancing numerous research programs in the cognitive sciences and related areas, and will enhance the educational experience of several undergraduate/graduate classes by enabling the creation of new courses in psychology and cognitive neuroscience.