Dana M. Basnight-Brown

Differences in semantic and translation priming across languages: The role of language direction and language dominance

In the present study, we examined bilingual memory organization, using the priming paradigm. Many of the previous studies in which this experimental technique has been used in the bilingual domain appear to have had several differences in methodology that have caused there to be a lot of variation in the data reported. The aim of the present work was to create an experimental situation that was well constrained so that automatic processes could be observed. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals participated in an unmasked semantic- and translation-priming study in which a lexical decision task was used. The results revealed significant translation-priming effects in both language directions and, unexpectedly, significant semantic priming in the L2-L1 direction only. In Experiment 2, we examined semantic- and translation-priming effects with a forward mask design. The results indicated that significant priming was obtained only for translation word pairs in both language directions. These results are discussed with regard to current models of bilingual memory representation.

Methodological considerations in performing semantic- and translation-priming experiments across languages

Research in the field of bilingualism has had as its principal aim to describe the structure and function of memory for bilingual speakers. A primary technique that has been used to examine bilingual memory is an examination of cross-language word priming (semantic and translation), using the lexical decision and pronunciation tasks. Although studies have, on occasion, revealed greater degrees of word priming from a dominant to a subordinate language, in comparison with the reverse, a careful review of the methodology that has been used reveals a number of issues that render conclusions such as this quite problematic. Parameters of concern include language proficiency, cognate status, masking, control conditions, word frequency and length, stimulus onset asynchrony, relatedness proportion, and nonword ratio. These factors are discussed, as well as recommendations for conducting future empirical research in this area of investigation.

The automatic access of emotion: Emotional Stroop effects in Spanish–English bilingual speakers

The emotional Stroop task provides an experimental measure of selective attention to emotional information. In the current study, the emotional Stroop effect was examined in a Spanish–English bilingual speaking population. The results revealed that the emotional Stroop effect is a robust phenomenon and replicable within a bilingual population. Furthermore, highly proficient bilinguals demonstrated equal interference effects in both their first language and their second language. The current study provides evidence of the automatic activation of emotional components in words appearing in more than one language. These results are discussed with reference to previous findings in the literature on bilingual emotion word representation.

The representation of emotion vs. emotion-laden words in English and Spanish in the Affective Simon Task

An Affective Simon Task was administered to English-speaking monolinguals and Spanish—English bilinguals, in order to assess the extent to which valence and emotionality are automatically processed when reading a word. Participants classified words in white on the basis of valence (positive or negative), or classified them on the basis of color (blue or green) via a key press. Words were either emotion words (e.g., happy; anxious) or emotion-laden words (e.g., dream; shark). Bilinguals viewed words in both English and Spanish. While only negative emotion words produced the typical congruency effects, both negative and positive emotion-laden words produced significant Simon effects, in monolinguals. Similar effects emerged for bilinguals, in both languages. Results indicate that emotion word type moderates the Affective Simon Task and also provide a demonstration of these effects in bilinguals. Overall, the data also provide further evidence that affective coding in both a dominant and a subordinate language can influence subsequent responses in seemingly irrelevant tasks. Results are discussed within a framework focused on the representation of emotion in both monolingual and bilingual speakers.

List Context Fosters Semantic Processing: Parallels between Semantic and Morphological Facilitation when Primes Are Forward Masked.

The authors examined patterns of facilitation under forward-masked priming conditions across 3 list contexts (Experiments 1-3) that varied with respect to properties of filler trials -- (a) mixed (morphological, orthographic, semantic), (b) identity, and (c) semantic -- but held the relatedness proportion constant (75%). Facilitation for targets that were related morphologically to their prime occurred regardless of filler context, but facilitation for semantically related pairs occurred only in the context of identity and semantic fillers. Facilitation was absent for orthographically similar prime-target pairs in all 3 filler contexts when matching numbers of orthographically similar word-word and word-nonword prime-target pairs rendered orthographic similarity uninformative with respect to lexicality of the target. Enhanced semantic and morphological facilitation in the context of identity and semantic relative to mixed fillers support a semantically attuned, as contrasted with a purely form-based, account of early morphological processing.

The acquisition of concrete, abstract, and emotion words in a second language

The purpose of the current work was to investigate whether wordtype moderates the learning of vocabulary words in a new language. English-speaking monolinguals were trained on a matched set of concrete (e.g., jewel), emotion (e.g., angry), and abstract (e.g., virtue) words in Spanish. Participants learned a set of Spanish words and then engaged in a Stroop color-word task where they determined the color in which the words appeared (none were related to color). They also engaged in a translation recognition task where foils included semantic associates of the newly acquired word. Results indicated that although the semantic representations of all three wordtypes were acquired, there was a gradient in the degree to which those meanings were automatically activated. The pattern of data indicated that newly learned emotion words vs. non-emotion words produced faster color naming times, longer recognition times, and higher error rates in recognition.

Multiple Translations in Bilingual Memory: Processing Differences across Concrete, Abstract, and Emotion Words.

Historically, the manner in which translation ambiguity and emotional content are represented in bilingual memory have often been ignored in many theoretical and empirical investigations, resulting in these linguistic factors related to bilingualism being absent from even the most promising models of bilingual memory representation. However, in recent years it was reported that the number of translations a word has across languages influences the speed with which bilinguals translate concrete and abstract words from one language into another (Tokowicz and Kroll in Lang Cogn Process 22:727–779, 2007). The current work examines how the number of translations that characterize a word influences bilingual lexical organization and the processing of concrete, abstract, and emotional stimuli. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals translated concrete and abstract words with one and more than one translation. As reported by Tokowicz and Kroll, concreteness effects emerged only when words had more than one translation across languages. In Experiment 2, bilinguals translated emotion words with more than one translation. Concreteness effects emerged in both language directions for words with more than one translation, and in the L1–L2 language direction for words with a single translation across languages. These findings are discussed in terms of how multiple translations, specifically for emotion words, might be incorporated into current models of bilingual memory representation.