Bilingual lexical representation: we have some words to say

Abstract

This paper has two aims 1). to examine evidence for noncognate translation priming from cross-language masked priming studies of printed words.2) to introduce an automatic procedure for creating masked speech priming experiments. For 1) we conducted two meta-analyses that aggregated evidence from masked translation priming studies in the L1 to L2 and L2 to L1 prime-target directions. These showed that there was evidence of significant priming for both directions, and that priming was larger for the L1-L2 direction. The analyses revealed considerable heterogeneity in outcomes, particularly for priming in the L1 to L2 direction. For 2) we outlined some of the practical difficulties that are involved in implementing a masked speech priming experiment and offered a largely automated solution (that we will make available) . We then briefly considered whether the work with written primes and targets may translate to the spoken medium.