Date of Award
9-21-2018
Publication Type
Master Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
Psychology
Keywords
bilingual, L1, L2, lexical processing, word frequency effect, word recognition
Supervisor
Buchanan, Lori
Rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The current study examined the effect of differential word frequency on the relationship of lexical entries between the primary and secondary language. Ninety Urdu-English bilingual participants were used, and their performance was compared to forty-five English monolinguals matched for age and education. The task for both participant groups was a lexical decision task with 60 high and 60 low frequency English words. The stimulus set consisted of four frequency conditions High English-High Urdu, High English-Low Urdu, Low English-High Urdu and Low English-Low Urdu. A general frequency effect was observed – all participants responded faster to high frequency targets than low than low frequency target words. There was also a main effect of language experience with bilinguals producing longer reaction times than monolinguals. In addition, a frequency effect was observed in response times for high frequency English words as a function of their Urdu pair frequency. These results reveal a cross language frequency differential effect consistent with models proposing non-selective access of lexical processing in bilinguals.
Recommended Citation
Mustafa, Nawal, "The Word Frequency Effect: Relationship of Lexical Entries Between the Primary and Secondary Language" (2018). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 7548.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/etd/7548