Visual Masking by Translation Equivalents in Bilinguals

Abstract

Masking thresholds for common words as a function of the relationship between target and mask were assessed using French-English bilingual subjects. Five target-mask combinations were employed. Two control conditions involved unrelated pairs presented in either the same or both languages. The experimental conditions employed masks that were subordinate to the target, e.g., animal-horse, masks that were the translation equivalents of the targets, and masks which were homophones of the target. Homophones were superior masks compared to same-language, unrelated masks which were in turn superior to subordinately related masks. Translation equivalents were less effective masks than different-language unrelated masks but were similar to subordinate same-language masks. The results suggest that the relationship between the representations of translation equivalents is similar to that between same-language superordinate and subordinate words.