Cross-language positive and negative priming effects reverse when priming manipulations proceed from L2 to L1, compared with L1 to L2.

Abstract

An ongoing controversy in the negative priming (NP) literature is whether NP effects can be obtained when a large pool of words are used.

Experiment 1 presents the first priming study conducted in an African language, Twi a native language of Ghana, with Twi (L1) - English (L2) bilinguals. Both “attended repetition” (positive priming), and “ignored repetition” (negative priming) manipulations with words were tracked from L1 to L2.

In Experiment 2 the priming was in the L2 to L1 (i.e., English to Twi), instead of L1 to L2 (i.e., Twi to English) direction.

Sample with Twi stimuli. Exp 1 the probe target word was in English. Exp 2 prime words were both in English.