Is there lexical competition in the recognition of L2 words for different-script bilinguals? An examination using masked priming with Japanese-English bilinguals

The present research examined whether a lexical competition process operates when different-script bilinguals process L2 words. In masked priming lexical decision experiments (67 ms prime duration), word neighbor primes facilitated target identification for Japanese-English bilinguals (Experiment 1) although the same primes produced inhibitory effects for L1 English readers (Experiment 2). Subsequent experiments confirmed that the facilitory priming effects are reliable (Experiment 4), and are not due to bilinguals' inability to process masked L2 primes to the lexical level (Experiments 3 and 4) or bilinguals relying on sublexical activation from neighbor primes in responding to upper-case English targets (Experiment 5). Some evidence of lexical competition was observed, however, with clearly visible primes (Experiment 6, using a 175 ms prime duration). These results suggest that different-script bilinguals deal with orthographic similarity in L2 words differently from L1 readers. The authors discuss ways in which the L2 lexicon of different-script bilinguals may be different.