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Comparing the Frequency Effect Between the Lexical Decision and Naming Tasks in Chinese
Published on: April 1, 2016
The cognate facilitation effect: implications for models of lexical access
A Costa1, A Caramazza, N Sebastian-Galles
1Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
|September 29, 2000
Summary
Bilinguals showed faster picture naming for cognates, suggesting nonselected words activate phonological information. This effect diminished in monolinguals, supporting cascaded activation models of lexical access.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Bilingualism Research
Background:
- Investigating the activation of nonselected lexical information during language processing is crucial for understanding speech production.
- Bilinguals offer a unique model to study language competition and activation due to their dual linguistic systems.
Purpose of the Study:
- To determine if nonselected lexical nodes activate phonological information in bilingual speakers.
- To examine the influence of language dominance on this phonological activation.
Main Methods:
- Catalan-Spanish bilinguals and monolinguals named pictures with cognate and noncognate names.
- Naming latencies were compared between cognate and noncognate conditions.
- Experiment 2 further analyzed the effect based on naming in dominant versus nondominant languages.
Main Results:
- Bilinguals exhibited significantly shorter naming latencies for cognates compared to noncognates.
- This cognate facilitation effect disappeared in monolingual speakers.
- The difference between cognates and noncognates was more pronounced when naming in the nondominant language.
Conclusions:
- Nonselected lexical nodes do activate phonological information, even when not the target word.
- These findings provide evidence supporting cascaded activation models of lexical access in bilinguals.
- Language dominance plays a role in the degree of phonological activation observed.
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