AoA is a unique psycholinguistic variable because of its link to the semantic architecture of the mental lexicon (e.g., Brysbaert, Wijnendaele & de Deyne, 2000). The role of AoA on free recall has been examined in English (Coltheart & Winograd, 1986;Dewhurst, Hitch & Barry, 1998) and recently in Turkish (Raman, Raman, Ikier et al, under revision) with contradictory outcomes. While an overall advantage was found for late acquired items in English, the contrary was reported in Turkish. Furthermore, this effect appeared to be modulated by frequency and whether items were presented in pure or mixed lists. The present study extends Raman et al study to monolingual Russian and bilingual Russian (L1) -English (L2) speakers in order to understand the extent to which AoA affects free recall. One interesting aspect of Russian writing system is that it consists of Cyrillic and Roman letters, hence creating a shared orthographic medium in Russian-English bilinguals. Participants were allocated to either picture or word condition and subsequently to either pure list or mixed list condition. Both monolingual Russian (N=42) and bilingual (N=40) Russian (L1) -English (L2) data show a robust main effect for AoA in free recall irrespective of list type for words and for pictures and no significant interactions. Overall, early acquired words and pictures had an advantage over late acquired items. These findings are contrary to what has been reported in the literature for monolingual English speakers (Dewhurst et al, 1998) but in line with findings for Turkish (Raman et al, under revision) and will be discussed within the monolingual and bilingual theoretical frameworks.

Identifying and exploring factors that influence bilingual language processing has been the topic of much psycholinguistic research. Semantic priming is typically used to examine semantic processing and refers to the phenomenon in which semantically related items (doctor-nurse) are processed faster and more accurately than semantically unrelated items (doctor-butter). The aim of the chapter is to address two key questions: 1) how the two languages of a bilingual are organised or stored and 2) how the two languages are processed. A review of the literature shows that there are currently no theoretical frameworks that explain Russian monolingual or Russian (L1)-English (L2) bilingual storage or processing. Monolingual Russian speakers and bilingual Russian (L1)-English (L2) speaking university students were asked to name target words under related or unrelated conditions. The results show that the magnitude of the semantic priming effect was determined by L2 proficiency. The implications for these findings is discussed within the current bilingual theoretical models.

Identifying and exploring factors that influence bilingual language processing has been the topic of much psycholinguistic research. Semantic priming is typically used to examine semantic processing and refers to the phenomenon in which semantically related items (doctor-nurse) are processed faster and more accurately than semantically unrelated items (doctor-butter). The aim of the chapter is to address two key questions: 1) how the two languages of a bilingual are organised or stored and 2) how the two languages are processed. A review of the literature shows that there are currently no theoretical frameworks that explain Russian monolingual or Russian (L1)-English (L2) bilingual storage or processing. Monolingual Russian speakers and bilingual Russian (L1)-English (L2) speaking university students were asked to name target words under related or unrelated conditions. The results show that the magnitude of the semantic priming effect was determined by L2 proficiency. The implications for these findings is discussed within the current bilingual theoretical models.