How Bilinguals Read Words in Their Two Languages (Lexical Access in Visual Word Recognition in Second Language Processing)

Abstract

Abstract Bilingual visual word comprehension is affected by the knowledge of more than one language. Word representations in a bilingual's mind are stored in an integrated manner, and processing during reading similarly shows signs of language nonselective activation. Such cross‐language activation is observed in reading times for cognates (form‐similar translation equivalents), which are processed faster than noncognate controls, and reading times for false friends (word forms associated with different meanings), which are typically slower than those for control words. The facilitation effect observed for cognates is dependent on their between‐language overlap in terms of word form and meaning. Recent findings indicate that processing of identical cognates in some circumstances may lead to inhibitory effects, depending on stimulus list composition and task requirements. The facilitation effect for cognates and the interference effect for false friends are not only observed for word processing in isolation but also when such words are read in sentence context. The presence of language‐specific words and a semantically biasing context, along with the reader's L2 proficiency, modulate the size of the effects. Models of bilingual word recognition, the Multilink model, in particular, can simulate the observed effects and help to understand mechanisms underlying bilingual processing.