Do both WRAP and TRAP inhibit the recognition of the French word DRAP? Impact of orthographic markedness on cross-language orthographic priming

Abstract

We investigated lexical and sub-lexical orthographic coding in bilingual visual word recognition by examining interactions between orthographic neighborhood and markedness. In three experiments, French/English bilinguals performed a masked lexical decision task in French (L1) in which orthographically related prime words could be either marked or unmarked English (L2) words, compared to unrelated primes (e.g., wrap, trap, gift – DRAP, meaning sheet). The results yielded an overall inhibition priming effect, which was unexpectedly more robust in the marked condition than in the unmarked one. This result highlights the need to integrate both lexical competition and orthographic markedness in bilingual models such as BIA/+ and determine how the latter may modulate lexical processing in bilinguals.

Are Translation Equivalents Always Activated When Bilinguals Perform a Task in One of Their Languages? Behavioral and ERP Evidence of the Role of the Task

“…Indeed, if the Spanish translation of fang ( barro ) was activated when fang was presented, it should have had an effect in the processing of burro (i.e., in the decision about the lexical status word or nonword of burro ). This is a common finding in studies where the orthographic similarity between primes and targets is manipulated in a priming paradigm (e.g., [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]). The lack of such an effect either at a behavioral or at a neural level suggests that this activation may be task dependent, and a logical consequence of the characteristics of the translation recognition task.…”

“…We tested them in a translation recognition task (the one used in all the previous studies, Experiment 1) and in a lexical decision task with a priming paradigm (Experiment 2). This last task was used because it has been shown to be sensitive to both semantic effects [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ] and form effects [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ] produced by the presentation of a word in one language (prime) in the processing of a word in another language (target). We recorded both behavioral and ERP measures.…”