Author Type

Graduate Student

Date of Award

1985

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Status

Version of Record

Submission Date

October 2026

Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to examine the hypotheses concerning shared versus separate semantic organization in bilingual memory. Normative data were collected from monolingual samples of South Florida residents for 12 Spanish/English semantic categories. Measures of typicality and familiarity, and their correlations are listed. These data afforded the predictive tools implemented in the two subsequent RT experiments. Experiments 2 and 3 evaluated the extent to which the two language systems are integrated in semantic memory. Bilingual subjects were required to respond on a two word lexical decision task whether a letter string was a word or a nonword, irrespective of language. The paradigm involved a priming procedure in varying degrees of semantic relatedness, under same- versus mixed-language conditions. Interlingual lexical facilitation effects of equal magnitude to the intralingual were demonstrated even at 100 msec SOA, indicating no cognitive cost of language code-switching. The results support a common semantic representational system subserving the bilingual lexicon.

Extent

109 p.

Comments

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1985.|Charles E. Schmidt College of Science|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1985.

Identifier

FADT14242

Format

pdf

Download

Share

COinS