Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling

Electrophysiological and behavioural evidence suggests that Chinese translations of English words are automatically activated when Chinese-English bilinguals read English words (e.g., Thierry & Wu, 2007; Wu & Thierry, 2010; Zhang, van Heuven, & Conklin, 2011). The present study investiga...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wen, Yun, van Heuven, Walter J.B.
Format: Article
Published: Elsevier 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50976/
_version_ 1848798382780317696
author Wen, Yun
van Heuven, Walter J.B.
author_facet Wen, Yun
van Heuven, Walter J.B.
author_sort Wen, Yun
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Electrophysiological and behavioural evidence suggests that Chinese translations of English words are automatically activated when Chinese-English bilinguals read English words (e.g., Thierry & Wu, 2007; Wu & Thierry, 2010; Zhang, van Heuven, & Conklin, 2011). The present study investigated the impact of translation activation in three behavioural experiments with in total 118 Chinese-English bilinguals. First, we investigated whether Chinese phonology was the source of the effects of Chinese character repetition in the Chinese translations of English masked primes and targets (hidden repetition priming) observed in Zhang et al.’s (2011), and whether these hidden repetition priming effects were affected by Chinese morpheme complexity and prime duration. However, we failed to find any evidence of hidden repetition priming. An exact replication of Zhang et al. (2011) was conducted next, which again provided no evidence for hidden repetition priming. However, cross-language priming data collected with the same group of participants did reveal masked translation priming and crucially Chinese character repetition priming with masked Chinese primes and English targets (partially hidden repetition priming), indicating that the activation of Chinese translations in the masked priming paradigm is limited to English target words. Computational modeling work provided further support that translation form activation is limited to target words in the masked priming paradigm.
first_indexed 2025-11-14T20:18:53Z
format Article
id nottingham-50976
institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T20:18:53Z
publishDate 2018
publisher Elsevier
recordtype eprints
repository_type Digital Repository
spelling nottingham-509762020-05-04T19:49:03Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50976/ Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling Wen, Yun van Heuven, Walter J.B. Electrophysiological and behavioural evidence suggests that Chinese translations of English words are automatically activated when Chinese-English bilinguals read English words (e.g., Thierry & Wu, 2007; Wu & Thierry, 2010; Zhang, van Heuven, & Conklin, 2011). The present study investigated the impact of translation activation in three behavioural experiments with in total 118 Chinese-English bilinguals. First, we investigated whether Chinese phonology was the source of the effects of Chinese character repetition in the Chinese translations of English masked primes and targets (hidden repetition priming) observed in Zhang et al.’s (2011), and whether these hidden repetition priming effects were affected by Chinese morpheme complexity and prime duration. However, we failed to find any evidence of hidden repetition priming. An exact replication of Zhang et al. (2011) was conducted next, which again provided no evidence for hidden repetition priming. However, cross-language priming data collected with the same group of participants did reveal masked translation priming and crucially Chinese character repetition priming with masked Chinese primes and English targets (partially hidden repetition priming), indicating that the activation of Chinese translations in the masked priming paradigm is limited to English target words. Computational modeling work provided further support that translation form activation is limited to target words in the masked priming paradigm. Elsevier 2018-08-31 Article PeerReviewed Wen, Yun and van Heuven, Walter J.B. (2018) Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling. Journal of Memory and Language, 101 . pp. 84-96. ISSN 1096-0821 Translation activation; Hidden repetition priming; Translation priming; Masked priming; Chinese-English bilinguals; Computational modelling https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2018.03.004 doi:10.1016/j.jml.2018.03.004 doi:10.1016/j.jml.2018.03.004
spellingShingle Translation activation; Hidden repetition priming; Translation priming; Masked priming; Chinese-English bilinguals; Computational modelling
Wen, Yun
van Heuven, Walter J.B.
Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling
title Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling
title_full Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling
title_fullStr Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling
title_full_unstemmed Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling
title_short Limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals and computational modelling
title_sort limitations of translation activation in masked priming: behavioural evidence from chinese-english bilinguals and computational modelling
topic Translation activation; Hidden repetition priming; Translation priming; Masked priming; Chinese-English bilinguals; Computational modelling
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50976/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50976/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/50976/