Whereas most theoretical and computational models assume a continuous flow of activation from concepts to lexical items in spoken word production, one prominent model assumes that the mapping of concepts onto words happens in a discrete fashion (Bloem & La Heij, 2003). Semantic facilitation of context pictures on word translation has been taken to…

Researchers on bilingual processing can benefit from computational tools developed in artificial intelligence. We show that a normalized Levenshtein distance function can efficiently and reliably simulate bilingual orthographic similarity ratings. Orthographic similarity distributions of cognates and non-cognates were identified across pairs of…

In two experiments, we tested the role of lexical repetition, cognates, and second language (L2) proficiency in the priming of code-switches, using the structural priming technique. Dutch-English bilinguals repeated a code-switched prime sentence (starting in Dutch and ending in English) and then described a target picture by means of a…

If access to the bilingual lexicon takes place in a language independent way, monolingual repetition and masked form priming accounts should be directly applicable to bilinguals. We tested such an account (Grainger and Jacobs, 1999) and extended it to explain bilingual effects from L2 to L1. Dutch-English bilinguals made a lexical decision on a…

Dutch-English participants named words and nonwords with a between-language phonologically inconsistent rime, e.g., GREED and PREED, and control words with a language-typical rime, e.g., GROAN, in a monolingual stimulus list or in a mixed list containing Dutch words. Inconsistent items had longer latencies and more errors than typical items in the…

To investigate decision level processes involved in bilingual word recognition tasks, Dutch-English participants had to name Dutch-English homographs in English. In a stimulus list containing items from both languages, interlingual homographs yielded longer naming latencies, more Dutch responses, and more other errors in both response languages if…

In their keynote contribution, Truscott and Sharwood Smith offer a general model of language development from a processing perspective. As they state, their model is very ambitious: Their "acquisition by processing" theory (APT) aims not only at explaining both first and second language acquisition but also real-time processing in language…

Many studies have reported that word recognition in a second language (L2) is affected by the native language (L1). However, little is known about the role of the specific language combination of the bilinguals. To investigate this issue, the authors administered a word identification task (progressive demasking) on 1,025 monosyllabic English (L2)…

Evaluates the BIA model of bilingual word recognition in the light of recent empirical evidence. Points out problems with the model and proposes a new model, the BIA+. The new model extends the old one by adding phonological and semantic lexical representations to the available orthographic ones, and assigns a different role to the so-called…

Responds to comments written in response to an earlier article by that proposed a new model of bilingual word recognition. Clarifies aspects of the proposed model that have led to misunderstandings. (Author/VWL)

Dutch-English bilinguals performed a generalized lexical decision task on triplets of items, responding with "yes" if all items wee correct Dutch and/or English words, and with "no" if one or ore of the items was not a word in wither language. Semantic priming effects were found in on-line response times. Event-related potentials that were…

Contrasted the effect of instruction-induced expectancies and language intermixing in an English lexical decision task performed by Dutch-English bilinguals. Results indicate that language intermixing rather than instruction-based expectancies drives the bilingual participants' performance. Consequences for current views on bilingual word…

Eight commentaries are provided on an article examining the means by which bilinguals control their two language systems. (Author/VWL)