EXAMINING AND REEXAMINING THE STRUCTURE OF CHINESE-ENGLISH BILINGUAL MEMORY

The asymmetry model of bilingual memory proposed by Kroll and Stewart assumes that translation from a first language (L1) into a second lang uage (L2), or forward translation, is mediated by an underlying concep tual memory, whereas L2-to-L1, or backward, translation is lexical and direct. Lexical links from L2 to L1 are hypothesized to be stronger t han those from LI to L2, but conceptual links are stronger for L1 than L2. These assumptions were evaluated in this study, which used stimul us items with similar recognition thresholds. Proficient Chinese-Engli sh bilinguals were tested on picture naming, word naming, word transla tion and category matching. The translation asymmetry effect predicted by the model (i.e., backward being faster than forward translation) w as demonstrated, matching an L1 item to a category name was also Easte r than matching an L2 item. This pattern of results, nevertheless, did not completely hold after an adjustment procedure which sought to con trol for variations in response production and concept retrieval limes due to stimulus types. The present findings are consistent with previ ous ones which show increased L2 conceptual processing for the profici ent bilingual. They also suggest that an extended version of the asymm etry model should take into account possible biasing effects associate d with some conventionally used bilingual tasks.