Novel L2 words do not facilitate but interfere with their L1 translations during picture naming – behavioural and event-related potential evidence

Abstract

ABSTRACTEarly and late bilinguals name pictures in their native language faster when accompanied by the name’s translation equivalent from their second language. Here, we tested whether this effect also obtains with recently learned L2 words. Participants learned novel names for 36 familiar objects via a statistical association procedure. These novel words and their L1 translations were subsequently used as auditory (identical, semantic, unrelated) distractors in a picture–word interference task. Participants named the pictures with their L1 name (Experiments 1 and 2) or with their novel name (Experiment 2). Against our prediction, the L2 translations led to interference instead of facilitation in L1 naming. The reverse situation (L2 naming, L1 distractor) showed no interference. In event-related potentials, identical distractors induced a reduced N400 in all conditions except in the one that showed behavioural interference. The results are discussed in relation to models of bilingual language production.