The role of polysemy in masked semantic and translation prim

JournalofMemoryandLanguage51(2004)

1–22

JournalofMemoryandLanguage

/locate/jml

Theroleofpolysemyinmaskedsemantic

andtranslationpriming

MatthewFinkbeiner,a,*KennethForster,bJanetNicol,b

andKumikoNakamurab

ab

DepartmentofPsychology,HarvardUniversity,Cambridge,MA02138,USADepartmentofPsychology,UniversityofArizona,Tucson,AZ85721,USA

Received1December2003;revisionreceived5January2004

Availableonline5March2004

Abstract

Awell-knownasymmetryexistsinthebilingualmaskedprimingliteratureinwhichlexicaldecisionisused:namely,maskedprimesinthedominantlanguage(L1)facilitatedecisiontimesontargetsinthelessdominantlanguage(L2),butnotviceversa.Insemanticcategorization,ontheotherhand,primingissymmetrical.InExperiments1–3wecon rmthistaskdi erence, ndingrobustmaskedL2–rmulatinganaccountforthese ndings,webeginwiththeassumptionofarepresentationalasymmetrybetweenL1andL2lexicalsemanticrepresentations,suchthatL1representationsarerichlypopulatedandL2representationsarenot.Accordingtothisrepresentationalaccount,L2–L1primingdoesnotoccurinlexicaldecisionbecauseaninsu cientproportionoftheL1lexicalsemanticrepresentationisactivatedbytheL2prime.Insemanticcategorization,wearguethatthesemanticinformationrecruitedtogenerateadecisionisrestrictedbythetaskcategory,andthatthisrestrictionenhancesthee ectivenessoftheL2prime.InExperiments4–6,theseassumptionsweretestedinawithin-languagesettingbypairingmany-sensewords(e.g.,‘‘head’’)withfew-sensewords(e.g.,‘‘skull’’).Inlexicaldecision,robustprimingwasobtainedinthemany-to-fewdirection(analogoustoL1–L2),but,noprimingwasobtainedinthefew-to-manydirection(analogoustoL2–L1)usingthesamewordpairs.Priminginsemanticcategorization,ontheotherhand,wasobtainedinbothdirections.WeproposetheSenseModelasapossibleaccountofthese ndings.Ó2004ElsevierInc.Allrightsreserved.

Keywords:Maskedtranslationpriming;Semanticpriming;Bilinguallexicalprocessing;Bilinguallexicon;Lexicaldecision;Semanticcategorization

Themaskedtranslationprimingparadigmhaspro-ventobeinstrumentalinthedevelopmentofpsycho-linguisticaccountsofbilinguallexicalrepresentationandprocessing.Oneimportant ndingthatthispara-digmhasrevealed,andonethatanysuccessfulmodelofbilinguallexicalprocessingmustbeabletoexplain,isthetranslationprimingasymmetryinlexicaldecision

Correspondingauthor.Fax:1-617-496-6262.

E-mailaddress:msf@wjh.harvard.edu(M.Finkbeiner).

*

(Isitaword?).Thiswell-establishedasymmetry,whichhasbeenreportedbyseveralresearchersworkingwithdi erentbilingualpopulations,ischaracterizedbythefollowingpatternof ndings:masked(subliminal)primesinthedominantlanguage(L1)facilitaterecog-nitionoftranslation-equivalentwordsinthenon-dominantlanguage(L2)(deGroot&Nas,1991;Gollan,Forster,&Frost,1997;Jiang,1999;Jiang&Forster,2001;Keatly,Spinks,&DeGelder,1994;Wil-liams,1994);however,maskedL2primesdonotreli-ablyfacilitaterecognitionofL1translation-equivalent

0749-596X/$-seefrontmatterÓ2004ElsevierInc.Allrightsreserved.

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2004.01.004