Using orthographic neighborhoods of interlexical nonwords to support an interactive-activation model of bilingual memory

Certain models of bilingual memory based on parallel, activation-driven self-terminating search through independent lexicons can reconcile both interlingual priming data (which seem to support an overlapping organization of bilingual memory) and homograph recognition data (which seem to favor a separate-access dual-lexicon approach). But the dual-lexicon model makes a prediction regarding recognition times for nonwords that is not supported by the data. The nonwords that violate this prediction are produced by changing a single letter of non-cognate interlexical homographs (words like appoint and mince that are words in both French and English, but have completely different meanings in each language), thereby producing regular nonwords in both languages (e.g., appaint and monce). These nonwords are then classified according to the comparative sizes of their orthographic neighborhoods in each language. An interactive-activation model, unlike the dual-lexicon model, can account for reaction times to these nonwords in a relatively straightforward manner. For this reason, it is argued that an interactive-activation model is the more appropriate of the two models of bilingual memory.

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