The ability of children to process words printed in a second language was studied over the course of a school year as the children acquired increasing familiarity with the language. The children, ranging in age from 5 to 15 years, represented four ability groups with respect to their reading skills in their first and second languages. A picture-word interference task assessed the degree to which children processed word meaning automatically. The task required children to name pictures in their first language while ignoring distractor words printed within the pictures' borders. On same-language (SL) trials, the printed distractor words appeared in the child's first language. On cross-language (CL) trials, the distractor words appeared in the child's second language. The results indicated that second language words were automatically processed to the level of meaning early in the course of second language reading instruction. Both the pattern and the amount of CL interference generally matched that for SL trials. The common pattern of interference for both the SL and CL manipulations across several conditions that varied the picture-word meaning relation suggested that a superordinate conceptual representation served both language lexicons. (Author/AMH)