Cross-language priming asymmetries in lexical decision and episodic recognition

Masked translation priming between languages with different scripts exhibit s a marked asymmetry in lexical decision, with much stronger priming from L 1 to L2 than from L2 to L1. This finding was confirmed in a lexical decisio n task with Chinese-English bilinguals who were late learners of English. F ollowing a suggestion made by Bradley (1991), the experiment was repeated u sing a speeded episodic recognition task. Participants studied Chinese word s, and then were tested ill an old/new classification task in which Chinese target words well primed by masked English translation equivalents. Signif icant priming was obtained for old items, not for new items. However, no pr iming was obtained when lexical decision was used. Unexpectedly, the episod ic task showed a reverse asymmetry, since L1-L2 priming was not obtained wi th this task, although strong effects were obtained for lexical decision. A possible explanation for this pattern of results is that knowledge of L2 l exical items is represented episodically for late learners. (C) 2001 Academ ic Press.