The bilingual mental lexicon: Masked priming evidence for shared lexicons

Sabourin, L. & Brien, C.

University of Ottawa

Research on the organization of language and how it is processed in the bilingual brain is an important aspect of not only understanding linguistic processes but is also very important for understanding neural organization in general. It is currently debated whether bilinguals and language learners make use of one single lexicon (containing words from both their languages), or whether they have separate stores for words from each language. The present series of experiments investigates lexical processing in English-French bilinguals by using behavioural and event-related brain potential (ERP) masked priming techniques to investigate semantic and translation priming effects. Masked priming, which has provided evidence for early, automatic semantic priming effects in monolingual populations (Grossi, 2006), has also been used to investigate the possible existence of one large lexicon for items in both languages, or whether separate lexicons exist for each language. In Experiment 1, a behavioural masked priming paradigm measuring reaction time, English dominant participants (with little knowledge of French) exhibited repetition and semantic priming effects. Early balanced bilinguals also showed repetition priming effects as well as equivalent semantic and translation priming. Groups of late learners (L1 English-L2 French and L1 French-L2 English) showed more graded effects with clear repetition priming, some semantic priming and a trend towards translation priming effect. Preliminary ERP data (using an ERP masked priming paradigm) will also be presented. This data adds to the current debate of whether semantic priming effects can be seen using a cross-language paradigm. As well, insights into the effects of age of acquisition on the bilingual mental lexicon will be discussed.