The masked translation priming effect was examined in Chinese–English bilinguals using lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks in an effort to understand why the two tasks seem to produce different patterns of results. A machine-learning approach was used to assess the participant-based factors that contribute to the sizes of translation priming effects in these tasks. As expected, the participant-based factors that predicted translation priming effects did vary across tasks. Priming effects in lexical decision were associated with higher self-rated listening, reading, and writing abilities in English. Priming effects in semantic categorization were associated with more frequent use of English in daily life, spoken English proficiency, and self-rated listening proficiency in English. These results are discussed within the framework of Multilink, the logic of which is then expanded in an attempt to account for these task differences.

Perturbations to the speech articulators induced by frequently using an interfering object during infancy (i.e., pacifier) might shape children's language experience and the building of conceptual representations. Seventy-one typically developing third graders performed a semantic categorization task with abstract, concrete and emotional words. Children who used the pacifier for a more extended period were slower than the others. Moreover, overusing the pacifier increased response time of abstract words, whereas emotional and (above all) concrete words were less affected. Results support the view that abstract words are grounded both in perception-action and in linguistic experience.

We assessed language switch and mixing costs in a language-general semantic categorization task and examined how these costs relate to general inhibition and set shifting capacities. The participants were 51 native Finnish subjects with English as L2. The results showed significant symmetric language switch costs and, unexpectedly, a mixing advantage in L2: reaction times were faster in the mixed language block than in the single language block. The interactions with the general executive functions showed no consistent overall pattern. We argue that the L2 mixing advantage stems from statistical facilitation in line with a horse race model, or from opportunistic planning as suggested by the Adaptive Control hypothesis. We argue that the results overall indicate that lexical access in language reception is non-selective.

This study investigated the role and time-course of phonology in accessing meaning during silent reading. In Experiment 1, the homophone effect was replicated in a semantic categorization task in French. When deciding whether a stimulus belonged to a semantic category (FOOD), subjects made more errors to homophones (MEET) than to orthographic controls (MELT). In Experiment 2, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were used to study the online development of this effect. If access to meaning was mediated by phonology, smaller N400 components should be obtained to homophones than to orthographic controls. The ERP data exhibited a full-blown N400 component to homophones that did not differ from the N400 to controls. No differences between homophones and controls were found before the N400. After the N400, however, homophones differed from controls, with ERPs to homophones being similar to those of correct category exemplars. The results suggest that the final selection of a word's meaning does not depend on its phonological form. This result is incompatible with a strong phonological view according to which the only way to meaning is via a word's phonology.