Selectivity in lexical access in bilinguals

Abstract

Abstract A distinction between a weak version and a strong version of the nonselective access hypothesis is differentiated. The former asserts that bilinguals cannot ignore a language in the input or environment even when it is irrelevant to the current task. The latter proposes that both of bilingual speakers’ languages are always active and may affect their linguistic performance even when both the task and input are monolingual in nature. Research evidence obtained from the interference paradigm and the priming paradigm is quite consistent in supporting the weak version of the hypothesis. However, the findings regarding the strong version are complicated. The bilingual interactive activation model and its successors played a significant role in driving this research, including research involving different-script bilinguals.