Abstract: First-language research suggests that new words, after initial episodic-memory encoding, are consolidated and hence become lexically integrated. We asked here if lexical consolidation, about word forms and meanings, occurs in a second language. Italian-English sequential bilinguals learned novel English-like words (e.g., apricon, taught to mean ���stapler���). fMRI analyses failed to reveal a predicted shift, after consolidation time, from hippocampal to temporal neocortical activity. In a pause-detection task, responses to existing...
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