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Masked translation priming with semantic categorization: Testing the Sense Model*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2010

XIN WANG*
Affiliation:
National University of Singapore
KENNETH I. FORSTER
Affiliation:
University of Arizona
*
Address for correspondence: Xin Wang, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore ellwx@nus.edu.sg

Abstract

Four experiments are reported which were designed to test hypotheses concerning the asymmetry of masked translation priming. Experiment 1 confirmed the presence of L2–L1 priming with a semantic categorization task and demonstrated that this effect was restricted to exemplars. Experiment 2 showed that the translation priming effect was not due to response congruence. Experiment 3 replicated this finding, and demonstrated that the 150 ms backward mask that had been used in earlier translation priming experiments was not essential. Finally, it was demonstrated in Experiment 4 that L2–L1 priming was not obtained for an ad hoc category, indicating that priming was not obtained merely because the task required semantic interpretation. These results provide further support for the Sense Model proposed by Finkbeiner et al. (2004).

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

*

The work was partially supported by the AAFSAA (2007) grant at the University of Arizona. Thanks to Matthew Finkbeiner and two anonymous BLC reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions.

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