Non-selective lexical access in different-script bilinguals

Abstract

Lexical access in bilinguals is known to be largely non-selective. However, most studies in this area have involved bilinguals whose two languages share the same script. This study aimed to examine bilingual lexical access among bilinguals whose two languages have distinct scripts. Korean–English bilinguals were tested in a phoneme monitoring task in their first or second language. The results showed a simultaneous activation of the non-target language in a monolingual task, suggesting non-selective lexical access even among bilinguals whose two languages do not share the same script. Language dominance did not affect the pattern of results.