Cross Language Priming in Bilingual Aphasics

Abstract

The present study aimed to determine whether cross language semantic and translation priming was present in bilingual aphasics and normal’s in a pair-wise lexical decision task. The stimuli were designed to induce automatic processing (relatedness proportion of 0.3 and non word ratio of 0.5) in two conditions - prime presented in Kannada (LI) and target in English ( L2) and prime in English ( L2) and target in Kannada (L1),presented with a 250 ms SOA and a stimulus set. Results revealed that significant semantic priming and translation priming was present in aphasics and normals when the prime was presented in (LI) and target in (L2). However, significant semantic and translation priming was present only for normals when the prime was presented in (L2) and target in (LJ). This suggests that lexical processing of primes was slower in aphasics compared to normals. In addition, priming was greater in Ll-L2 condition than L2-LI condition for both aphasics and normals. This asymmetry is explained on the basis of the revised hierarchical model and the sense model.