Article
Ana I. Schwartz and Ana B. Areas Da Luz Fontes. "Cross-language mediated priming: Effects of context and lexical relationship" Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 11 (2008): 106-129. Available at: http://works.bepress.com/ana_schwartz/3
Publication Date
January 2008
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition
Volume
11
Abstract
We examined how linguistic context influences the nature of bilingual lexical activation. We hypothesized that in single-word context, form-related words would receive the strongest activation while, in sentence context, semantically related words would receive the strongest activation. Spanish-English bilinguals performed a semantic verification task on English target words preceded by a prime. On critical trials, the prime and target words were paired based either on a form-mediated relationship through the native language (L1), [e.g., bark (barco): BOAT] (Experiment 1) or on a semantically-mediated relationship [e.g., boat (barco): BARK] (Experiment 2). The prime word was presented either in isolation or after a sentence context. In Experiment 1 interference was observed in the single word condition only. In Experiment 2 interference was observed in both single-word and sentence contexts. The findings demonstrate that the context in which words are embedded has an impact on the type of lexical competitors that become active.
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