Repetition and masked form priming within and between languages using word and nonword neighbors

If access to the bilingual lexicon takes place in a language independent way, monolingual repetition and masked form priming accounts should be directly applicable to bilinguals. We tested such an account (Grainger and Jacobs, 1999) and extended it to explain bilingual effects from L2 to L1. Dutch–English bilinguals made a lexical decision on a Dutch target word preceded by a briefly presented word or nonword prime from Dutch (L1; Exp. 1) or English (L2; Exp. 2). The prime was an orthographically related neighbor of the target (e.g., zwaar–ZWAAN or spoon–SPION) or unrelated (e.g., thuis–ZWAAN or mouse–SPION). On their first presentation, responses to L1 word targets were non-significantly slowed relative to unrelated primes following both L1 and L2 related word primes. Upon target repetition, all effects turned into facilitation. Stable facilitation effects were also found when word targets were preceded by related nonwords derived from Dutch or English words. Simulations by the Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus (BIA+) model account for the major effects within and across languages.

Short Article: Analysing the relationship between target-to-target and distractor-to-target repetitions: Evidence for a common mechanism

In the present study an assumption of retrieval theories of negative priming was tested. In particular, retrieval theories assume that the same underlying process causes benefits in target-to-target repetition trials and cost effects in distractor-to-target repetition trials in selection tasks in which targets are accompanied by distractor stimuli. More specifically, retrieval theories predict a negative correlation: The higher the benefit in target-to-target repetition trials is, the higher the cost effect in distractor-to-target repetition trials should be. In fact, in a study with considerable power ( N = 110) and a design that allowed a confound-free detection of correlations, I observed a significant negative correlation between benefit and cost effects. This result is interpreted as evidence for a common retrieval mechanism.