Cognate facilitation priming effect is modulated by writing system

Evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals

Bibliographic Data

ID21272467
AuthorsJuan Zhang (0000-0003-3613-6332), Chenggang Wu (0000-0003-3837-3841, Faculty of Education, University of Macau, China, corresponding author), Tiemin Zhou (Shenyang Normal University), Yaxuan Meng (0000-0002-7323-9827, Faculty of Education, University of Macau, China)
Year2018
Volume23
Issue2
Pages553-566
Publication date2018-01-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Bilingualism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1367-0069 • E-ISSN: 1756-6878
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1367006917749062
OpenAlexW2783792923
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited31

Aims: The present study aims to examine the cross-script cognate facilitation effect that cognates have processing advantages over non-cognates and this effect is strong evidence supporting the non-selective access hypothesis for bilinguals. Methodology: By adopting a masked translation priming paradigm, Experiment 1 used 48 Chinese–English cognates (Chinese words) and 48 non-cognates (Chinese words) as primes and their English translation equivalences as targets. Chinese–English bilinguals were instructed to judge whether the target stimuli were real words or not. In Experiment 2, another group of participants took the same lexical decision task as in Experiment 1, except that English–Chinese cognates and non-cognates (English words) served as primes and their Chinese translation equivalences were targets. Data and analysis: Response latency and accuracy data were submitted to a repeated-measures analysis of variance. Findings/conclusions: Experiment 1 showed that Chinese–English cognates (Chinese words) and non-cognates (Chinese words) produced similar priming effect, while Experiment 2 revealed that English–Chinese cognates (English words) generated a significant priming effect, whereas non-cognates (English words) failed to induce any priming effect. Overall, Chinese words did not show cognate advantage, while English words produced a significant cognate facilitation effect. These results might be attributed to different mappings from orthography to phonology in English and Chinese. Opaque mapping from orthography to phonology in Chinese hindered phonological activation and reduced Chinese–English cognate phonological priming effect. However, English–Chinese cognates benefited from transparent mapping from sound to print and thus generated a significant phonological priming effect. Implications of the current findings for bilingual word recognition models were discussed. Originality: The present study is the first to investigate the cross-script cognate facilitation effect by ensuring both the heterogeneity of primes and targets (English and Chinese) and the homogeneity of primes (Chinese or English). The results indicated that the writing systems of the primes constrained the cross-script cognate priming effect

Biology · Cognate · Cognition · Facilitation · Lexical decision task · Linguistics · Orthography · Phonology · Repetition priming · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development · Second Language Acquisition and Learning

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