Previous priming studies suggest that, even for bilinguals of languages with different scripts, non-selective lexical activation arises. This lexical decision eye-tracking study examined contributions of frequency, phonology, and meaning of L1 Japanese words on L2 English word lexical decision processes, using mixed-effects regression modeling. The response times and eye fixation durations of late bilinguals were co-determined by L1 Japanese word frequency and cross-language phonological and semantic similarities, but not by a dichotomous factor encoding cognate status. These effects were not observed for native monolingual readers and were confirmed to be genuine bilingual effects. The results are discussed based on the Bilingual Interactive Activation model (BIA+, Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002) under the straightforward assumption that English letter units do not project onto Japanese word units.

Recent studies have documented frequency effects for word n-grams, independently of word unigram frequency. Further studies have revealed constructional prototype effects, both at the word level as well as for phrases. The present speech production study investigates the time course of these effects for the production of prepositional phrases in English, using event related potentials (ERPs). For word frequency, oscillations in the theta range emerged. By contrast, phrase frequency showed a persistent effect over time. Furthermore, independent effects with different temporal and topographical signatures characterized phrasal prototypicality. In a simulation study we demonstrate that naive discrimination learning provides an alternative account of the data that is as least as powerful as a standard lexical predictor analysis. The implications of the current findings for models of language processing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

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This article extends recent findings that presenting semantically related vocabulary simultaneously inhibits learning. It does so by adding story contexts. Participants learned 32 new labels for known concepts from four different semantic categories in stories that were either semantically related (one category per story) or semantically unrelated (four categories per story). They then completed a semantic-categorization task, followed by a stimulus-match verification task in an eye-tracker. Results suggest that there may be a slight learning advantage in the semantically unrelated condition. However, our findings are better interpreted in terms of how learning occurred and how vocabulary was processed afterward. Additionally, our results suggest that contextual support from the stories may have surmounted much of the disadvantage attributed to semantic relatedness.Semantic Categories and L2 Vocabulary foreign language textbooks. Usually, students are presented with a particular topic or situation (e.g., food, professions, vacations, and so on) and they are given lists of words and pictures that are most commonly related to the particular topic or situation. The vocabulary is then semantically related. This method of presentation is also viewed as an effective tool for vocabulary acquisition and retention by researchers such as Gairns and Redman (1986), Nattinger (1988), Stahl andNagy (2006), andGraves (2006), who believe that presenting two words that are semantically related not only helps a learner to become aware of the similarities in meaning but also to determine and remember the differences between them. However, when analyzing recent work on the effects of semantic relatedness on second-language (L2) vocabulary learning, it is clear that this method, in spite of its continual popularity and reported effectiveness, may hinder the learning process. Considering the essential role that semantics plays in L2 vocabulary learning even at the earliest stages of acquisition (Altarriba & Mathis, 1997), it is important to investigate this area in more depth. The purpose of this study is to address this issue by expanding on existing research on the effects of semantic relatedness on L2 vocabulary acquisition. Semantic Relatedness and Context in L2 Vocabulary LearningThe existing body of research in the area of semantic relatedness and L2 vocabulary learning has shown that exposing learners to semantically related words may hinder their ability to learn them effectively. For example, Tinkham (1993) determined that L2 learners were able to learn words that were not semantically related faster than those that were. In his study, 20 English speakers were asked to learn and orally recall sets of three semantically related and unrelated nonwords (paired with their English counterparts) and two sets of six semantically related and unrelated nonwords (also accompanied by an English translation). In both experiments, the participants were able to learn and recall the semantically unrelated set faster than the semantically re...