Sensitivity to Phonological Similarity Within and Across Languages

The influence of phonological similarity on bilingual language processing was examined within and across languages in three experiments. Phonological similarity was manipulated within a language by varying neighborhood density, and across languages by varying extent of cross-linguistic overlap between native and non-native languages. In Experiment 1, speed and accuracy of bilinguals’ picture naming were susceptible to phonological neighborhood density in both the first and the second language. In Experiment 2, eye-movement patterns indicated that the time-course of language activation varied across phonological neighborhood densities and across native/non-native language status. In Experiment 3, speed and accuracy of bilingual performance in an auditory lexical decision task were influenced by degree of cross-linguistic phonological overlap. Together, the three experiments confirm that bilinguals are sensitive to phonological similarity within and across languages and suggest that this sensitivity is asymmetrical across native and non-native languages and varies along the timecourse of word processing.