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Masked translation priming with cognates and noncognates: Is there an effect of words’ concreteness?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2016

PILAR FERRÉ ,
ROSA SÁNCHEZ-CASAS ,
MONTSERRAT COMESAÑA  and
JOSEP DEMESTRE
PILAR FERRÉ*
Affiliation:
Research Center for Behavior Assessment, Department of Psychology, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
ROSA SÁNCHEZ-CASAS
Affiliation:
Research Center for Behavior Assessment, Department of Psychology, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
MONTSERRAT COMESAÑA
Affiliation:
Human Cognition Lab, CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho, Portugal
JOSEP DEMESTRE
Affiliation:
Research Center for Behavior Assessment, Department of Psychology, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain
*
Address for correspondence: Pilar Ferré, Department of Psychology and CRAMC, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Carretera de Valls, s/n, 43007-Tarragona, SPAIN[email protected]
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Abstract

In the domain of bilingualism, a main issue of interest has been to determine whether the two languages are shared at a conceptual level and which variables modulate the access to the conceptual system. In this study, we focused on the effects of two variables related to word-type. We tested proficient unbalanced Spanish–English bilinguals in a masked translation priming paradigm conducted in the two translation directions (L1 to L2, and L2 to L1), by orthogonally manipulating for the first time concreteness and cognate status. The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) was also manipulated (50 ms vs 100 ms). Results revealed modulations in masked priming effects as a function of cognate status and translation direction. However, the effect of concreteness was only observed at the long SOA. The findings are discussed in light of the most relevant models of bilingual memory, mainly the Distributed Feature Model (de Groot, 1992a).

Keywords

models of bilingual memoryconcretenesscognate statusforward and backward translation directionmasked translation priming
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , August 2017 , pp. 770 - 782
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

1

Deceased

*

This paper is dedicated to the memory of our beloved friend and colleague Rosa Sánchez-Casas. We thank Juan Haro for his help in running the experiments. This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PSI2012-37623, PCIN-2015-165-C02-02) and by the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) through the state budget, with reference IF / 00784/2013 / CP1158 / CT0013.

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