A central finding of bilingual research is that cognates – words that share semantic, phonological, and orthographic characteristics across languages – are processed faster than non-cognate words. However, it remains unclear whether cognate facilitation effects are reliant on identical cognates, or whether facilitation simply varies along a continuum of cross-language orthographic and phonological similarity. In two experiments, German–English bilinguals read identical cognates, close cognates, and non-cognates in a lexical decision task and a sentence-reading task while their eye movements were recorded. Participants read the stimuli in their L1 German and L2 English. Converging results found comparable facilitation effects of identical and close cognates vs. non-cognates. Cognate facilitation could be described as a continuous linear effect of cross-language orthographic similarity on lexical decision accuracy and latency, as well as fixation durations. Cross-language phonological similarity modulated the continuous orthographic similarity effect in single word recognition, but not in sentence processing.

The masked translation priming effect was examined in Chinese–English bilinguals using lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks in an effort to understand why the two tasks seem to produce different patterns of results. A machine-learning approach was used to assess the participant-based factors that contribute to the sizes of translation priming effects in these tasks. As expected, the participant-based factors that predicted translation priming effects did vary across tasks. Priming effects in lexical decision were associated with higher self-rated listening, reading, and writing abilities in English. Priming effects in semantic categorization were associated with more frequent use of English in daily life, spoken English proficiency, and self-rated listening proficiency in English. These results are discussed within the framework of Multilink, the logic of which is then expanded in an attempt to account for these task differences.

Prior research has shown that word identification times to DENTIST are faster when briefly preceded by a visually similar prime (dentjst; i↔j) than when preceded by a visually dissimilar prime (dentgst). However, these effects of visual similarity do not occur in the Arabic alphabet when the critical letter differs in the diacritical signs: for the target the visually similar one-letter replaced prime (compare and is no more effective than the visually dissimilar one-letter replaced prime Here we examined whether this dissociative pattern is due to the special role of diacritics during word processing. We conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment in Spanish using target words containing one of two consonants that only differed in the presence/absence of a diacritical sign: n and ñ. The prime-target conditions were identity, visually similar, and visually dissimilar. Results showed an advantage of the visually similar over the visually dissimilar condition for muñeca-type words (muneca-MUÑECA < museca-MUÑECA), but not for moneda-type words (moñeda-MONEDA = moseda-MONEDA). Thus, diacritical signs are salient elements that play a special role during the first moments of processing, thus constraining the interplay between the “feature” and “letter” levels in models of visual word recognition.

The current study investigates how second language auditory word recognition, in early and highly proficient Spanish–Basque (L1-L2) bilinguals, is influenced by crosslinguistic phonological-lexical interactions and semantic priming. Phonological overlap between a word and its translation equivalent (phonological cognate status), and semantic relatedness of a preceding prime were manipulated. Experiment 1 examined word recognition performance in noisy listening conditions that introduce a high degree of uncertainty, whereas Experiment 2 employed clear listening conditions, with low uncertainty. Under noisy listening conditions, semantic priming effects interacted with phonological cognate status: for word recognition accuracy, a related prime overcame inhibitory effects of phonological overlap between target words and their translations. These findings are consistent with models of bilingual word recognition that incorporate crosslinguistic phonological-lexical-semantic interactions. Moreover, they suggest an interplay between L2-L1 interactions and the integration of information across acoustic and semantic levels of processing in flexibly mapping the speech signal onto the spoken words, under adverse listening conditions.

To test the BIA+ and Multilink models’ accounts of how bilinguals process words with different degrees of cross-linguistic orthographic and semantic overlap, we conducted two experiments manipulating stimulus list composition. Dutch–English late bilinguals performed two English lexical decision tasks including the same set of cognates, interlingual homographs, English control words, and pseudowords. In one task, half of the pseudowords were replaced with Dutch words, requiring a ‘no’ response. This change from pure to mixed language list context was found to turn cognate facilitation effects into inhibition. Relative to control words, larger effects were found for cognate pairs with an increasing cross-linguistic form overlap. Identical cognates produced considerably larger effects than non-identical cognates, supporting their special status in the bilingual lexicon. Response patterns for different item types are accounted for in terms of the items’ lexical representation and their binding to ‘yes’ and ‘no’ responses in pure vs mixed lexical decision.

This study examined the activation of first language (L1) translations in second language (L2) word recognition in a lexical decision task. Test materials included English words that differed in the frequency of their Chinese translations or in their surface lexical frequency while other lexical properties were controlled. Chinese speakers of English as a second language of different proficiencies and native speakers of English were tested. Native speakers produced a reliable lexical frequency effect but no translation frequency effect. English as a second language speakers of lower English proficiency showed both a translation frequency effect and a lexical frequency effect, but those of higher English proficiency showed a lexical frequency effect only. The results were discussed in a verification model of L2 word recognition. According to the model, L2 word recognition entails a checking procedure in which activated L2 words are checked against their L1 translations. The two frequency effects are seen to have two different loci. The lexical frequency effect is associated with the initial activation of L2 lemmas, and the translation frequency effect arises in the verification process. Existing evidence for verification in L2 word recognition and new issues this model raises are discussed.

In contrast to arbitrariness, a recent perspective is that words contain both arbitrary and iconic aspects. We investigated iconicity in word recognition, and the possibility that iconic words have special links between phonological and semantic features that may facilitate their processing. In Experiment 1, participants completed a lexical decision task (“Is this letter string a word?”) including words varying in their iconicity. Notably, we manipulated stimulus presentation conditions such that the items were visually degraded for half of the participants; this manipulation has been shown to increase reliance on phonology. Responses to words higher in iconicity were faster and more accurate, but this did not interact with condition. In Experiment 2 we explicitly directed participants’ attention to phonology by using a phonological lexical decision task (“Does this letter string sound like a word?”). Responses to words that were higher in iconicity were once again faster. These results demonstrate facilitatory effects of iconicity in lexical processing, thus showing that the benefits of iconic mappings extend beyond those reported for language learning and those argued for language evolution.

It has been documented that lipreading facilitates the understanding of difficult speech, such as noisy speech and time-compressed speech. However, relatively little work has addressed the role of visual information in perceiving accented speech, another type of difficult speech. In this study, we specifically focus on accented word recognition. One hundred forty-two native English speakers made lexical decision judgments on English words or nonwords produced by speakers with Mandarin Chinese accents. The stimuli were presented as either as videos that were of a relatively far speaker or as videos in which we zoomed in on the speaker’s head. Consistent with studies of degraded speech, listeners were more accurate at recognizing accented words when they saw lip movements from the closer apparent distance. The effect of apparent distance tended to be larger under nonoptimal conditions: when stimuli were nonwords than words, and when stimuli were produced by a speaker who had a relatively strong accent. However, we did not find any influence of listeners’ prior experience with Chinese accented speech, suggesting that cross-talker generalization is limited. The current study provides practical suggestions for effective communication between native and nonnative speakers: visual information is useful, and it is more useful in some circumstances than others.

The aim of the present study was to investigate whether the recognition speed of Finnish nominal base forms varies as a function of their paradigmatic complexity (stem allomorphy) or productivity status. Nikolaev et al. (2014) showed that words with greater stem allomorphy from an unproductive inflectional class are recognized faster than words with lower stem allomorphy from a productive inflectional class. Productivity of an inflectional paradigm correlates with the number of stem allomorphs in languages like Finnish in that unproductive inflectional classes tend to have higher stem allomorphy. We wanted to distinguish which of these two characteristics provides the benefit to speed of recognition found by Nikolaev et al. (2014). The current study involved a lexical decision task comparing three categories of words: unproductive with three or more stem allomorphs, unproductive with two stem allomorphs, and productive with two stem allomorphs. We observed a facilitation effect for word recognition only for unproductive words with three or more stem allomorphs, but not for unproductive words with two allomorphs. This effect was observed particularly in words of low to moderate familiarity. The findings suggest that high stem allomorphy, rather than productivity of the inflectional class, is driving the facilitation effect in word recognition.

The computational BIA+ model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002) has provided a useful account for bilingual word recognition, while the verbal (pre-quantitative) RHM (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) has often served as a reference framework for bilingual word production and translation. According to Brysbaert and Duyck (2010), a strong need is felt for a unified implemented account of bilingual word comprehension, lexical-semantic processing, and word production. With this goal in mind, we built a localist-connectionist model, called Multilink, which integrates basic assumptions of both BIA+ and RHM. It simulates the recognition and production of cognates (form-similar translation equivalents) and non-cognates of different lengths and frequencies in tasks like monolingual and bilingual lexical decision, word naming, and word translation production. It also considers effects of lexical similarity, cognate status, relative L2-proficiency, and translation direction. Model-to-model comparisons show that Multilink provides higher correlations with empirical data than both IA and BIA+ models.

Is the specific consonant–vowel (CV) letter combination of a word a basic source of information for lexical access in the early stages of processing? We designed two masked priming lexical decision experiments to respond to this question by directly examining the role of CV skeletal structure in written-word recognition. To that aim, each target word was preceded by a one-letter different nonword prime that kept the same CV skeletal structure or not. We also included an identity prime as a control. Results showed faster word identification times in the CV congruent condition than in the CV incongruent condition when a consonant was replaced from the target (paesaje–PAISAJE < parsaje–PAISAJE), but not when it was a vowel (alusno–ALUMNO = alueno–ALUMNO). This dissociation poses problems for those accounts based on an early activation of the CV skeletal structure during lexical processing. Instead, this pattern of data favors the view that it is the word's consonant skeleton rather than the CV skeletal structure that is the key element in the early phases of word processing. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.

This paper discusses how patterns of construction usage, implicitly learned over lifelong experience, tune the language processing system for fluent interactive lexical, syntactic, and semantic access. It reports on three experiments that investigate online processing of Verb–Argument Constructions (VACs) and the degree to which this is effected by (i) verb frequency in the language, (ii) verb frequency in the VAC, (iii) VAC-verb contingency, and (iv) verb prototypicality in terms of centrality within the VAC semantic network. Experiment 1 tested lexical decision of VAC exemplars presented as successive verb–preposition pairs. Experiment 2 tested lexical decision of VAC exemplars presented as arbitrarily interrupted verb–adverb–preposition pairs. Experiment 3 had participants judge whether two-word utterances were meaningful or not. All of the experiments show effects of Verb Frequency and Verb-VAC frequency: learners have rich implicit statistical knowledge of verb-VAC type–token frequency that guides processing. Lexical decision is additionally driven by semantic prototypicality (but not VAC-verb contingency ΔPcw), whereas meaning judgment is affected by VAC-verb contingency ΔPcw (but not semantic prototypicality). These findings, I argue, index the spreading activation of unconscious meaning representation in lexical decision in comparison to the election of a unitary interpretation in conscious comprehension. I conclude that speeded automatic VAC processing involves rich associations, tuned by verb type and token frequencies, their contingencies of usage, and their histories of prototypical and specific interpretations which interface syntax, lexis, and semantics.

The word frequency effect is stronger in second language (L2) processing than in first language (L1) processing. According to the lexical entrenchment hypothesis, this difference is not due to a qualitative difference in word processing between L1 and L2, but can be explained by differences in exposure to the target language: People with less exposure to a language show a steeper frequency curve for that language. Exposure differences can be measured with a vocabulary test. The present study tested whether the lexical entrenchment hypothesis provides an adequate explanation for differences in lexical decision times. To this end, we compared the performance of 56 Dutch–English bilinguals to that of 1011 English L1 speakers on 420 English six-letter words. In line with previous research, the differences in the word frequency effect between word processing in L1 and in L2 became vanishingly small once vocabulary size was entered as a predictor. Only in a diffusion model analysis did we find some evidence that the information build-up may be slower in L1 than in L2, independent of vocabulary size. We further report effects of cognates, age-of-acquisition, and neighborhood size that can also be explained in terms of differences in exposure.

This experiment shows that recent experience in one language influences subsequent processing of the same word-forms in a different language. Dutch–English bilinguals read Dutch sentences containing Dutch–English cognates and interlingual homographs, which were presented again 16 minutes later in isolation in an English lexical decision task. Priming produced faster responses for the cognates but slower responses for the interlingual homographs. These results show that language switching can influence bilingual speakers at the level of individual words, and require models of bilingual word recognition (e.g., BIA+) to allow access to word meanings to be modulated by recent experience.

Japanese–English bilinguals completed a masked phonological priming study with Japanese Katakana primes and English targets. Event related potential (ERP) data were collected in addition to lexical decision responses. A cross-script phonological priming effect was observed in both measures, and the effect did not interact with frequency. In the ERP data, the phonological priming effect was evident before the frequency effect. These data, along with analyses of response latency distributions, provide evidence that the cross-script phonological priming effects were the consequence of the activation of sublexical phonological representations in a store shared by both Japanese and English. This activation fed back to sublexical and lexical orthographic representations, influencing lexical decision latencies. The implications for the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA+) model of word recognition are discussed.

The study of the effects of typographical factors on lexical access has been rather neglected in the literature on visual-word recognition. Indeed, current computational models of visual-word recognition employ an unrefined letter feature level in their coding schemes. In a letter recognition experiment, Pelli, Burns, Farell, and Moore-Page (2006), letters in Bookman boldface produced more efficiency (i.e., a higher ratio of thresholds of an ideal observer versus a human observer) than the letters in Bookman regular under visual noise. Here we examined whether the effect of bold emphasis can be generalized to a common visual-word recognition task (lexical decision: “is the item a word?”) under standard viewing conditions. Each stimulus was presented either with or without bold emphasis (e.g., actor vs. actor). To help determine the locus of the effect of bold emphasis, word-frequency (low vs. high) was also manipulated. Results revealed that responses to words in boldface were faster than the responses to the words without emphasis –this advantage was restricted to low-frequency words. Thus, typographical features play a non-negligible role during visual-word recognition and, hence, the letter feature level of current models of visual-word recognition should be amended.

Previous priming studies suggest that, even for bilinguals of languages with different scripts, non-selective lexical activation arises. This lexical decision eye-tracking study examined contributions of frequency, phonology, and meaning of L1 Japanese words on L2 English word lexical decision processes, using mixed-effects regression modeling. The response times and eye fixation durations of late bilinguals were co-determined by L1 Japanese word frequency and cross-language phonological and semantic similarities, but not by a dichotomous factor encoding cognate status. These effects were not observed for native monolingual readers and were confirmed to be genuine bilingual effects. The results are discussed based on the Bilingual Interactive Activation model (BIA+, Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002) under the straightforward assumption that English letter units do not project onto Japanese word units.