The role of polysemy in masked semantic and translation prim(5)

M.Finkbeineretal./JournalofMemoryandLanguage51(2004)1–225

Halfofthecriticaltargetsperlistwereprecededbytheirtranslationequivalentsandhalfwereprecededbyacontrolprime.Noothertargetswereprecededbytranslation-equivalentprimes.TwocounterbalancedlistswereconstructedsuchthatifatargetwasprecededbyitstranslationprimeonListA,itwasprecededbyitscontrolprimeonListBandviceversa.Notargetwordorprimewordwasrepeatedwithinlists.Partici-pantswereaskedtoindicatewhetherthetargetbe-longedtothecategorybypressingeitheraYESbuttonoraNObutton.Stimuliwerepresentedrandomlywithincategories,usingtheDMDXpackagedevelopedattheUniversityofArizonabyJ.C.Forster(Forster&Forster,2003),withtheonlyconstraintthatthe‘‘practice’’exemplarsprecededthecriticalitems.Re-sponsetimes(RTs)wererecordedtothenearestmilli-second.

Resultsanddiscussion

Datafromtrialsonwhichanerroroccurredwerediscardedandoutlierswerereplacedwithvaluesequaltocuto sestablished2SDunitsaboveandbelowthemeanforeachparticipant.Meanresponsetimeswere475msinthetranslationprimecondition,and494msinthecontrolprimecondition.AnANOVAshowedthatthis19mspriminge ectwashighlysigni cant(F1ð1;19Þ¼12:84,P¼:002;F2ð1;51Þ¼24:38,P<:001).Themeanerrorratewas1.2%anddidnotdi erbetweenconditions.

The ndingsofExperiment1revealthatourpar-ticipantspossessedsu cientL2lexicalprocessingskillstoexhibitreliablemaskedtranslationpriminge ectsintheL2–L1directioninasemanticcategori-zationtask.Assuch,theseresultscon rmthe ndingsofGraingerandFrenck-Mestre(1998).2AswepointedoutintheIntroduction,itisnotclearhowthesepa-ratememorysystemsaccountcouldaccommodatethese ndings.Asfortheconnection-strengthsaccountofthetranslationprimingasymmetry,these ndingsindicatethat,fortheseparticularbilinguals,L2form–meaningconnectionstrengthsdidnotconstitutealimitingfactorinL2–L1priming.Theconnection-strengthhypothesisshouldthereforepredictthattheseparticularbilingualsshouldalsoexhibitL2–L1prim-ingwhenthetaskischangedtolexicaldecision.WetestthispossibilityinExperiment2,usingthesamematerialsandmaskingprocedure,changingonlythetasktolexicaldecision.

2

This ndingalsosuggeststhatthemoste ectiveprocedureistoblockitemsbycategory,ratherthanchangingcategoryfromtrialtotrial,aswasthecaseintheSanchez-Casasetal.(1992)study.

Experiment2—maskedprimingwithL2primesinlexicaldecisionMethod

Participants

EighteenJapanese–Englishbilingualswererecruitedforthelexicaldecisionexperiment.Fourteenofthese18participantshadparticipatedinthesemanticcategori-zationexperiment6monthsprior.

Materials

ThematerialsfortheL2–L1translationprimingconditionwereidenticaltothoseusedinthesemanticcategorizationtaskexceptforthe110Japanesenon-wordsthathadtobecreated.Thesewerecreatedbydividingacolumnoftwo-characterJapanesewordsintotwocolumnsandrandomlysortingoneofthosecol-umnsandthenrejoiningthetwocolumns.Anyresultingcombinationsthatwerethoughtbythefourthauthor(anativespeakerofJapanese)tobewordswerediscarded.Additionally,80Englishwordswereselectedforthewithin-L2repetitionprimingcondition.Halfofthesewereabstractwordsandhalfwereconcretewords.ConcretenessvaluesweretakenfromtheMRCpsy-cholinguisticdatabase(availableonthewebathttp://www.psy.uwa.edu.au/mrcdatabase/uwa_mrc.htm).Theabstractwordshadameanconcretenessvalueof244.6(onascaleof100–700);theconcretewordshadameanconcretenessvalueof592.6.Thewordswerefurtherdividedonthebasisoffrequency.Halfofthewordswerehigh-frequencyitems(meanfrequencyof279oc-currencespermillion;CELEX)andhalfwerelow-fre-quencyitems(meanfrequencyof5.73occurrencespermillion).Thepurposeofselectingtheseparticularstimuliwastoseehowcloselythelexicalperformanceofthesebilingualspatternedtothatofnativespeakers.Ifthebilingualparticipantsexhibitclearfrequencyandconcretenesse ects,wecanberelativelysurethattheyareprocessingtheseitemsinlargelythesamewayasnativespeakers.

Inaddition,80non-wordtargetswereselectedtoelicit‘‘No’’responses.Non-wordsweregeneratedbytheARCNonwordDatabase(http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/~nwdb/)suchthatallnon-wordshadortho-graphicallyexistingonsetsandbodies,aswellaslegalbigrams.

Designandprocedure

ThedesignandprocedurewaslargelyidenticaltothatofExperiment1withtheobviousdi erencethatinthistaskparticipantswereaskedtoindicatewhetherthetargets(JapaneseintheL2–L1condition;EnglishintheL2–L2condition)werewordsornot.Itemconstruction,includingprimedurationandSOA,wasidenticaltothatofExperiment1.Twolistswere