Effect of Interlingual Homographs and Word Frequency on Bilingual Lexical Access

Abstract

In two experiments, a language decision task, and a multiple-choice English-Portuguese translation task, we examined the effect of interlingual homographs and word frequency on lexical access of Brazilian-Portuguese - English bilinguals. Language choice, accuracy, and response times were registered by the PsyToolkit software, and linear mixed-effects models were used in the analysis of the data. The results of this study align with the non-selective lexical access hypothesis. Bilinguals had facilitated access, particularly for words in the L2. There was also an interference effect of word frequency observed in both the L1 and L2 for interlingual homographs.

Keywords

• Bilingualism
• lexical access
• interlingual homographs
• word frequency