Orthography modulates lexical recognition in a second language

Abstract

We use a cross-modal masked priming paradigm to investigate a) whether orthography is always activated during lexical recognition and b) when activated, whether orthography influences the perception of allophonic variants by adult L2 learners. L1 Spanish and L2 Spanish learners (n=60) were exposed to written Spanish primes with ‘b’ ‘d’ or ‘g’ in intervocalic position. In Spanish, the positional phones corresponding to these orthographic symbols are voiced fricatives [β Ð v̥]; in English they are voiced plosives. In the matched prime trials, written primes were paired to auditory targets with the expected voiced fricative (lado ‘[laÐo] ‘side’). For the unmatched prime trials, the auditory target had medial plosives ([lado]. Orthographic prime durations were either 33ms (implicit, Condition 1) or 67ms (explicit, Condition 2). Accuracy and reaction times were registered on lexical decision to the auditory target. Preliminary RT results indicate a three-way interaction among group, trial type (matching or unmatching) and prime condition. Follow-up tests revealed a significant difference for the L2 listeners for prime conditions: significantly longer RTs were registered for the ‘matching’ trials when the orthographic prime was visible (Condition 2). These results suggest that L2 lexical recognition is modulated by orthographic information when it is explicitly available.