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Published on: April 12, 2018
Visual word recognition in bilinguals: phonological priming from the second to the first language
Ilse Van Wijnendaele1, Marc Brysbaert
1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium. Ilse.vanwijnendaele@psy.kuleuven.ac.be
Summary
Cross-lingual phonological priming occurs in both directions between a bilingual
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Bilingual language processing models.
- The role of phonology in word recognition.
- Cross-lingual interactions in bilingual speakers.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the directionality of cross-lingual phonological priming.
- To compare the magnitude of priming effects between the first language (L1) and second language (L2).
- To examine the relationship between priming effects and word naming latencies.
Main Methods:
- Priming experiments involving bilingual participants.
- Phonological priming tasks.
- Analysis of word naming latencies.
Main Results:
- Cross-lingual phonological priming was observed in both L1-to-L2 and L2-to-L1 directions.
- The magnitude of priming effects was similar in both directions.
- Priming effects were independent of differences in word naming latencies between L1 and L2.
Conclusions:
- Findings support strong phonological models of visual word recognition.
- Evidence challenges language-selective access models of bilingual processing.
- Phonological information is strongly shared and accessed across languages in bilinguals.
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