Kolloquium

Wednesday, 21.01.2026, at 16:15, Katarzyna Jankowiak (Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland) will give a talk in our colloquium.

The talk will take place online via Zoom: https://uni-freiburg.zoom-x.de/j/63096070323?pwd=34cjLdJHkxac90CdnsSGbzOwiW2b7H.1

Title:Stereotypical thinking across languages: Gender stereotypes in the bilingual brain

Abstract: 
Language is a primary vehicle for transmitting social norms and shared beliefs, including gender stereotypes that shape expectations about women and men and influence language comprehension at multiple processing levels. While previous research has demonstrated the automatic activation of gender stereotypes in native language (L1) processing, much less is known about how such normative knowledge is accessed when operating in the foreign language (L2). In this lecture, I will present two event-related potential (ERP) studies examining the neurocognitive mechanisms of gender stereotype processing in late proficient Polish (L1) – English (L2) bilinguals. Across the two experiments, we tested whether sensitivity to stereotype-laden information is reduced when bilingual speakers operate in their L2 relative to L1, in line with the Foreign Language Effect.

Experiment 1 investigated the processing of stereotype-congruent and incongruent sentences in L1 and L2, revealing language- and gender-dependent modulations in the N400 and Late Positive Complex (LPC) time windows, indexing lexico-semantic access and meaning integration, respectively. Experiment 2 employed a masked priming paradigm to probe stereotype activation at the word level, revealing reduced neural sensitivity to stereotype violations in L2 relative to L1.

Taken together, these findings provide converging neurophysiological evidence that gender stereotypes – despite their deeply entrenched nature – are less readily activated and integrated in a foreign language. The presentation will also highlight how language context modulates access to social norms across processing stages and will discuss implications for social cognition, decision-making, and bias reduction in bilingual settings.