Visual attention to words of native versus later acquired languages: a magnetoencephalographic study in humans

We recorded evoked magnetic fields while short words were visually presente d in different languages with an oddball paradigm. The task was to count ho w many words were in a target language when most of the words were in anoth er language and there were also non-target deviants in a third language. Wh en native words (Finnish) were targets, they evoked a selection response at the latency of 300-600 ms. However, when the task was to count non-native words among native standards, in addition to the targets, also the non-targ et foreign words evoked the selection response. These results may reflect d ifferences in the selection process for native versus non-native words brou ght about by different proficiency levels of the languages. (C) 2001 Elsevi er Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.