Bilingual Generation Effect: Variations in Participant Bilingual Type and List Type

Slamecka and Katsaiti (1987, Experiment 1) reported that there is no generation effect with bilingual materials under intentional learning instructions. In contrast, O'Neill, Roy, and Tremblay (1993, Experiment 1) demonstrated a bilingual generation effect when an incidental learning set was induced. In the present experiment, the possibility that another procedural variation between the two studies accounts for the disparate findings was examined. A 2-stimuli (read bilingual translations, generate bilingual translations) list was compared with a 3-stimuli (read bilingual translations, generate bilingual translations, read unilingual repetitions) list, in accordance with the procedures used in the earlier experiments. Under incidental learning conditions, for both list types, a strong generation effect was found. Participant type—coordinate or compound bilingualism—was also varied. The generation effect was much larger for compound bilinguals than for coordinate bilinguals, presumably because of a greater difference in the allocation of attention to read than to generate items by compound bilinguals.