Chinese-English bilinguals reading English hear Chinese

Bilingual individuals have been shown to access their native language while reading in or listening to their other language. However, it is unknown what type of mental representation (e.g., sound or spelling) they retrieve. Here, using event-related brain potentials, we demonstrate unconscious access to the sound form of Chinese words when advanced Chinese-English bilinguals read or listen to English words. Participants were asked to decide whether or not English words presented in pairs were related in meaning; they were unaware of the fact that some of the unrelated word pairs concealed either a sound or a spelling repetition in their Chinese translations. Whereas spelling repetition in Chinese translations had no effect, concealed sound repetition significantly modulated event-related brain potentials. These results suggest that processing second language activates the sound, but not the spelling, of native language translations.