Naming interlingual homographs : variable competition and the role of the decision system

Abstract

To investigate decision level processes involved in bilingual word recognition tasks, Dutch-English participants had to name Dutch-English homographs in English. In a stimulus list containing items from both languages, interlingual homographs yielded longer naming latencies, more Dutch responses, and more other errors in both response languages if they had a high-frequency Dutch reading. Dutch naming latencies were slower than or equally slow as English naming latencies. In a stimulus list containing only English words and homographs, there was no homograph effect in naming latencies, although homographs did elicit more errors than control words. The results are interpreted as the consequence of list-induced variability in the competition between lexical items of the two languages involved. In addition, two additional decision processes have to be assumed: a language check, and a response deadline for non-target language responses;