Resumen de Repetition and masked form priming within and between languages using word and nonword neighbors

Ton Dijkstra, Béryl Hilberink-Shulpen, Walter J. B. Van Heuven

• If access to the bilingual lexicon takes place in a language independent way, monolingual repetition and masked form priming accounts should be directly applicable to bilinguals. We tested such an account (Grainger and Jacobs, 1999) and extended it to explain bilingual effects from L2 to L1. Dutch–English bilinguals made a lexical decision on a Dutch target word preceded by a briefly presented word or nonword prime from Dutch (L1; Exp. 1) or English (L2; Exp. 2). The prime was an orthographically related neighbor of the target (e.g., zwaar–ZWAAN or spoon–SPION) or unrelated (e.g., thuis–ZWAAN or mouse–SPION). On their first presentation, responses to L1 word targets were non-significantly slowed relative to unrelated primes following both L1 and L2 related word primes. Upon target repetition, all effects turned into facilitation. Stable facilitation effects were also found when word targets were preceded by related nonwords derived from Dutch or English words. Simulations by the Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus (BIA+) model account for the major effects within and across languages.