Language Non-selective Access To Bilingual Phonological Representations: Evidence From Chinese-English Homophone Priming

The study aims to investigate the hypothesis of language non-selective access to an integrated lexicon for bilingual phonological representations. It also intends to study task dependence of cross-language phonological effects. To test the hypotheses, Chinese-English bilinguals performed three masked priming experiments with Chinese-English homophones, including the naming and lexical decision tasks. Priming effects were calculated by comparing response times of homophone pairs (e.g., "buy" and "败") and control pairs (e.g., "zoo" and "表").Two preparatory experiments were conducted for the selection of proper stimuli for the masked priming experiments. Phonological similarity of the stimuli was first rated, and the baseline response times of the homophonic targets and the control targets were collected and matched one-to-one before they were advanced to the masked priming experiments.The masked priming experiments were Experiment 1A (naming), Experiment IB (lexical decision) and Experiment 2 (naming). In Experiment 1A and IB, a 50-ms SOA was used. Results showed that homophone effects were significant when priming from English to Chinese, but not from Chinese to English. And cross-language priming effects were only detected in the naming task, not in the lexical decision task. It was suggested that the absence of priming effects from Chinese to English in Experiment 1A might be because that Chinese character phonology failed to be activated in such a brief time frame. Therefore in Experiment 2, the SOA was extended to 150 ms by inserting a 100-ms backward mask. This time, priming effects were obtained from Chinese to English. However, priming effects from English to Chinese disappeared, possibly because phonological priming effects were rather short-lived or the masks were too heavy for English L2 learners since both forward and backward masks were used.Taken together, the study provides evidence that supports the hypothesis of language non-selective access to an integrated lexicon for bilingual phonological representations, and extends the hypothesis to cover bilingual languages with distinct scripts. The study also reveals that task demands of phonological coding may be obligatory for obtaining Chinese-English cross-language phonological effects.