Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1366728909990472 How to cite this article: JANNIKA LAXÉN and JEAN-MARC LAVAUR (2010). The role of semantics in translation recognition: effects of number of translations, dominance of translations and semantic relatedness of multiple translations. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, pp 157-183This study aims to examine the influence of multiple translations of a word on bilingual processing in three translation recognition experiments during which French-English bilinguals had to decide whether two words were translations of each other or not. In the first experiment, words with only one translation were recognized as translations faster than words with multiple translations. Furthermore, when words were presented with their dominant translation, the recognition process was faster than when words were presented with their non-dominant translation. In Experiment 2, these effects were replicated in both directions of translation (L1-L2 and L2-L1). In Experiment 3, we manipulated number-of-translations and the semantic relatedness between the different translations of a word. When the two translations of a word (i.e., bateau) were related in meaning (synonyms such as the English translations boat and ship), the translation recognition process was faster than when the two translations of a word (i.e., argent) were unrelated in meaning (the two translations money and silver). The consequences of translation ambiguities are discussed in the light of the distributed conceptual feature model of bilingual memory (De Groot, 1992b;Van Hell and De Groot, 1998b).

The aim of this study was to expand our knowledge of the influence of emotional valence on visual word recognition by answering two questions. The first was to examine whether the emotional valence effect is sensitive to different types of task requirements, and the second was to examine whether words polysemy can modulate the effect of emotional valence. For this purpose, we manipulated orthogonally emotional valence (negative, positive and neutral words) and polysemy (polysemous vs. non polysemous words) in two versions of the lexical-decision task (one with legal nonwords and one with illegal nonwords). Results showed an effect of task: emotional valence and polysemy influenced lexical decision latencies only in the legal version of the lexical-decision task. Furthermore, results showed that the effect of polysemy was dependant on emotional valence. We observed a facilitation of polysemy for neutral words but not for emotional ones. Finally this experiment also showed that polysemy modulates the emotional valence effect. The facilitation observed for non polysemous emotional words compared to non polysemous neutral words disappeared for polysemous words. These findings fit with other studies showing facilitation for emotional word recognition and allow conclusions concerning the role of semantics on emotional word recognition.

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