Masked translation priming asymmetry in Chinese-English bilinguals: Making sense of the Sense Model

Abstract

Masked translation priming asymmetry is the robust finding that priming from a bilingual's first language (L1) to their second language (L2) is stronger than priming from L2 to L1. This asymmetry has been claimed to be task dependent. The Sense Model proposed by Finkbeiner, Forster, Nicol, and Nakamura (2004) claims that the asymmetry is reduced in semantic categorization relative to lexical decision due to a category filtering mechanism that limits the features considered in categorization decisions to dominant, category-relevant features. This paper reports two pairs of semantic categorization and lexical decision tasks designed to test the Sense Model's predictions. The experiments replicated the finding of Finkbeiner et al. that L2-L1 priming is somewhat stronger in semantic categorization than lexical decision, selectively for exemplars of the category. However, the direct comparison of L2-L1 and L1-L2 translation priming across tasks failed to confirm the Sense Model's central prediction that translation priming asymmetry is significantly reduced in semantic categorization. The data therefore fail to support the category filtering account of translation priming asymmetry. Rather, they suggest that pre-activation of conceptual features of the target category provides feedback to lexical forms that compensates for the weak connections between the lexical and conceptual representations of L2 words.

Keywords:

• Masked priming
• Bilingual processing
• Lexical decision
• Semantic categorization

This research formed part of the first author's PhD dissertation completed at the University of Sydney.

Notes

1 The same target items were repeated across exemplar and non-exemplar conditions of Experiment 1A, as well as across languages. Thus, across the entire experimental session, each target concept was presented six times—three times in each language. Although this design risks possible carryover effects and dilution of priming effects due to stimulus repetition (Zeelenberg & Pecher, 2003), these were minimized through counterbalancing of task and language order, and list assignment, none of which yielded significant effects in the analyses. Given the relatively limited number of suitable stimuli and the difficulty in matching across languages, this design was chosen to maximize control over item attributes by comparing the same target items across all conditions.

2 It is unclear why semantic priming from a visible label which is in a different language and different script to the primes would differ from semantic priming from the memory representation of the category that is required to perform this task, and it therefore seems unlikely that this aspect of the procedure would influence the pattern of priming observed. Nevertheless, it seemed desirable to remove any procedural differences that might contribute to our failure to confirm the Sense Model's predictions.