Abstract
In two experiments, semantic facilitation and translation priming effects in Chinese-English bilingual speakers were demonstrated with a lexical decision task. A 300-msec stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) was used between display of the prime and the target item. Experiment 1 showed that subjects' lexical decision responses were facilitated to a greater extent when primed by a translation equivalent than a semantically related between-language word. In Experiment 2, we found that pictorial, between-language, and within-language primes produced comparable effects of semantic facilitation. These results are in line with the hypothesis that lexical items in different languages and pictures are processed by means of an amodal conceptual system.
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This research was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from The Chinese University of Hong Kong to Hsuan-Chih Chen.
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Chen, HC., Ng, ML. Semantic facilitation and translation priming effects in Chinese-English bilinguals. Mem Cogn 17, 454–462 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202618
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03202618