Table 1
Participant Demographics.
| VARIABLE | M | max | M | max | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L1 GROUP (n = 95) | L2 GROUP (n = 112) | ||||
| Years2 | of education | 13.04 | 15.93 | ||
| Spent in an Eng.-speaking country | 20.06 | 6.34 | |||
| Age of | First contact with Eng.3 | 0.92 | 8.63 | ||
| First reading Eng.4 | 4.24 | 10.96 | |||
| Fluent reading Eng.5 | 7.02 | 18.17 | |||
| Level of Proficiency in6 | Speaking Eng. | 9.59 | 10 | 7.08 | 10 |
| Understanding spoken Eng. | 9.69 | 10 | 7.35 | 10 | |
| Reading in Eng. | 9.49 | 10 | 7.25 | 10 | |
| Current exposure to Eng. in7 | Interacting with friends | 9.59 | 10 | 6.27 | 10 |
| Interacting with family | 9.48 | 10 | 2.09 | 10 | |
| Watching TV | 8.55 | 10 | 6.06 | 10 | |
| Listening to radio/music | 8.21 | 10 | 5.99 | 10 | |
| Reading | 9.26 | 10 | 7.73 | 10 | |
| Language/Lab instruction | 6.06 | 10 | 5.02 | 10 | |
| Eng. | AoA8 | 4.49 | 17.43 | 10 | |
| Accentedness9 | 0.91 | 10 | 4.39 | 10 | |
| Nonnativeness10 | 0.76 | 10 | 5.71 | 10 | |
[i] Note: Eng = English; AoA = Age of Acquisition.
Table 2
Examples For Prime–Target Pairs Across Conditions and Word-Level Characteristics.
| TRANSPARENT | OPAQUE | FORM | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| REL | UNREL | TARGET | REL | UNREL | TARGET | REL | UNREL | TARGET | |
| snowball | passport | SNOW | butterfly | household | BUTTER | sandwich | vampire | SAND | |
| Word Freq | 3.21 (0.54) | 3.42 (0.94) | 4.76 (0.52) | 3.32 (0.71) | 3.38 (0.73) | 4.51 (0.65) | 4.02 (0.5) | 3.69 (0.92) | 4.83 (0.67) |
| OrthN | 0.03 (0.18) | 0.13 (0.42) | 8.34 (4.93) | 0.19 (0.4) | 0.59 (1.32) | 8.38 (4.88) | 0.22 (0.49) | 0.16 (0.45) | 10.75 (6.11) |
| PhonN | 0.65 (0.56) | 1.04 (1.2) | 16.34 (8.17) | 0.65 (0.71) | 1.26 (2.94) | 16.56 (7.40) | 2.10 (1.97) | 1.19 (1.5) | 19.84 (9.05) |
[i] Note: Rel = Related Prime; Unrel = Unrelated Prime; Word Freq = Word Frequency; OrthN = Orthographic Neighbourhood; PhonN = Phonological Neighbourhood.
Table 3
Mean Lexical Decision Times (Msec) and Error Rates across L1 English Participants (SD).
| (n = 94) | TRANSPARENT | OPAQUE | FORM | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RELATED | UNRELATED | RELATED | UNRELATED | RELATED | UNRELATED | |
| Mean | 566 (112) | 601 (114) | 598 (134) | 627 (129) | 611 (132) | 632 (139) |
| Error Rates | 0.03 (0.18) | 0.04 (0.19) | 0.05 (0.21) | 0.05 (0.23) | 0.06 (0.24) | 0.06 (0.25) |
| Effect Size | 35* | 29* | 21* | |||
[i] Note: An asterisk (*) indicates statistical significance.
Table 4
LME Results for L1 English.
| CONTRAST | estimate | SE | z.ratio | p.value |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| unrelated-related Form | 0.06 | 0.02 | 3.73 | 0.0002 |
| unrelated-related Opaque | 0.10 | 0.02 | 6.77 | <.0001 |
| unrelated-related Transparent | 0.12 | 0.01 | 8.22 | <.0001 |
| Interaction Form*Opaque | –0.05 | 0.02 | –2.22 | 0.03 |
| Interaction Opaque*Transparent | –0.02 | 0.02 | –0.84 | 0.40 |
| Interaction Form*Transparent | –0.06 | 0.02 | –3.05 | 0.002 |
[i] Note: Results are averaged over the levels of factor modality.
Table 5
Mean Lexical Decision Times (Msec) and Error Rates across L2 English Participants (SD).
| (n = 105) | TRANSPARENT | OPAQUE | FORM | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RELATED | UNRELATED | RELATED | UNRELATED | RELATED | UNRELATED | |
| Mean | 706 (241) | 744 (248) | 735 (256) | 773 (259) | 733 (235) | 769 (254) |
| Error Rates | 0.04 (0.20) | 0.04 (0.20) | 0.07 (0.27) | 0.07 (0.27) | 0.06 (0.23) | 0.07 (0.25) |
| Effect Size | 38* | 38* | 36* | |||
[i] Note: An asterisk (*) indicates statistical significance.
Figure 1
Form Priming as a Function of Language Proficiency/Exposure in L2 English.
Note: The “observed values” that make up the scatterplot are provided in raw RT scores, but the models are fitting “inverse RT”, which results in curves instead of straight lines.
Table 6
Post-hoc Contrasts between the Levels of Each Prime Type across L1 and L2 Groups.
| GROUP | CONTRAST | ESTIMATE | SE | Z.RATIO | P.VALUE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L1 | RE.Form | 0.06 | 0.01 | 4.00 | <.0001 |
| RE.Opq | 0.10 | 0.01 | 7.34 | <.0001 | |
| RE.Trnsp | 0.12 | 0.01 | 9.06 | <.0001 | |
| L2 | RE.Form | 0.06 | 0.01 | 4.58 | <.0001 |
| RE.Opq | 0.08 | 0.01 | 6.41 | <.0001 | |
| RE.Trnsp | 0.09 | 0.01 | 7.19 | <.0001 | |
| L1 vs L2 | RE.Form_Opq | –0.02 | 0.02 | –0.98 | 0.33 |
| RE.Form_Trnsp | –0.03 | 0.02 | –1.63 | 0.10 | |
| RE.Trnsp_Opq | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.63 | 0.53 | |
| RE.Trnsp | 0.03 | 0.02 | 1.80 | 0.07 | |
| RE.Opq | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.91 | 0.36 | |
| RE.Form | –0.01 | 0.02 | –0.40 | 0.69 |
[i] Note: RE = relatedness effect; Form, Opq, Trnsp = levels of prime type.
aResults are averaged over the levels of factor modality.
Figure 2
Visual Recognition of Compound Words in Monolinguals and Bilinguals.
Note: Embedded constituents are extracted based on the stem activation principles proposed within the word and affix model (Beyersmann & Grainger, 2023; Grainger & Beyersmann, 2017). Thicker arrows and nodes represent greater levels of activation arising from the degree of relatedness in meaning between the constituents and the whole word. Panels 1 and 2 depict the processing of transparent (snowball) and opaque compound words (honeymoon), which is comparable across L1 and L2. Panel 3 represents the processing of non-morphological form controls (sandwich), with stronger form priming in L2 (panel 3b) than in L1 (panel 3a).