Abstract
The masked translation priming paradigm has been widely used in the last 25 years to investigate word processing in bilinguals. Motivated by studies reporting mixed findings, in particular for second language (L2) to first language (L1) translation priming, we conducted, for the first time in the literature, a meta-analysis of 64 masked priming lexical decision experiments across 24 studies to assess the effect sizes of L1–L2 and L2–L1 non-cognate translation priming effects in bilinguals. Our meta-analysis also investigated the influence of potential moderators of translation priming effects. The results provided clear evidence of significant translation priming effects for both directions, with L1–L2 translation priming significantly larger than L2–L1 translation priming (i.e., effect size of 0.86 vs. 0.31). The analyses also revealed that L1–L2 translation effect sizes were moderated by the interval between prime and target (ISI), whereas L2–L1 translation effect sizes were modulated by the number of items per cell. Theoretical and methodological implications of this meta-analysis are discussed and recommendations for future studies are provided.
Highlights
A central issue addressed in bilingual psycholinguistic research is how words of two languages are represented and accessed
Since the first translation priming effects were reported from the first (L1) to the second language (L2) in de Groot and Nas’s (1991) seminal study, follow-up studies have used the non-cognate masked translation priming paradigm to investigate both L1–L2 and L2–L1 priming in unbalanced bilinguals
The Sense Model (Finkbeiner et al, 2004) proposes that translation priming asymmetry is attributed to a representational asymmetry between L1 and L2 words, namely, L1 words are associated with more semantic senses than L2 words
Summary
A central issue addressed in bilingual psycholinguistic research is how words of two languages are represented and accessed. To fill this important gap in the literature, we present here a meta-analysis that investigated masked translation priming effects of non-cognates word pairs in lexical decision tasks. The following criteria were used to select the final set of studies and experiments for the meta-analysis: (1) prime duration ≤ 100 ms, (2) primes were masked, (3) a lexical decision task was used, (4) prime-target pairs were non-cognates, (5) L1/L2 of bilinguals were clearly specified, and (6) either the F or t value of the translation priming effect was reported.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
