Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Paseo Mikeletegi 69, 20009 Donostia, Spain.
Mem Cognit. 2011 Feb;39(2):260-75. doi: 10.3758/s13421-010-0004-9.
Non-cognate masked translation priming lexical decision studies with unbalanced bilinguals suggest that masked translation priming effects are asymmetric as a function of the translation direction (significant effects only in the dominant [L1] to nondominant [L2] language translation direction). However, in contrast to the predictions of most current accounts of masked translation priming effects, bidirectional effects have recently been reported with a group of low proficient bilinguals Duyck & Warlop 2009 (Experimental Psychology 56:173-179). In a series of masked translation priming lexical decision experiments we examined whether the same pattern of effects would emerge with late and low proficient Greek (L1)-Spanish (L2) bilinguals. Contrary to the results obtained by Duyck and Warlop, and in line with the results found in most studies in the masked priming literature, significant translation priming effects emerged only when the bilinguals performed the task with L1 primes and L2 targets. The existence of the masked translation priming asymmetry with low proficient bilinguals suggests that cross-linguistic automatic lexico-semantic links may be established very early in the process of L2 acquisition. These findings could help to define models of bilingualism that consider L2 proficiency level to be a determining factor.
非同源掩蔽翻译启动词汇判断研究表明，掩蔽翻译启动效应是不对称的，取决于翻译方向（只有在主导语[L1]到非主导语[L2]的翻译方向上才有显著效果）。然而，与掩蔽翻译启动效应的大多数当前解释的预测相反，最近有研究报告称，在一组低水平的双语者中存在双向效应（Duyck & Warlop 2009，《实验心理学》56:173-179）。在一系列掩蔽翻译启动词汇判断实验中，我们检验了相同的效应模式是否会出现在晚期和低水平的希腊语（L1）-西班牙语（L2）双语者中。与 Duyck 和 Warlop 的结果相反，与掩蔽启动文献中的大多数研究结果一致，只有当双语者使用母语启动词和目标语目标词时，才会出现显著的翻译启动效应。低水平双语者的掩蔽翻译启动不对称的存在表明，跨语言自动词汇语义联系可能在第二语言习得过程的早期就建立起来了。这些发现可以帮助定义双语模型，将第二语言水平视为一个决定性因素。
