The bilingual lexicon: Modality effects in processing

In this article the effects of modality on the processing in the bilingual lexicon will be explored. Therefore, two parallel repetition priming experiments were conducted, an auditory and a visual one. The subjects were Dutch-English bilinguals. They had to perform a lexical decision task. There were two types of stimuli: cognates and noncognates. The results indicated that there are no processing differences between the auditory and the visual modalities. Furthermore, in both experiments interlingual repetition priming was found for both cognates and noncognates. The implications of these results for the influence of the factor proficiency level are discussed.