title: Do Bilinguals Automatically Activate Their Native Language When They Are Not Using It?
abstract: Most models of lexical access assume that bilingual speakers activate their two languages even when they are in a context in which only one language is used. A critical piece of evidence used to support this notion is the observation that a given word automatically activates its translation equivalent in the other language. Here, we argue that these findings are compatible with a different account, in which bilinguals "carry over" the structure of their native language to the non-native language during learning, and where there is no activation of translation equivalents. To demonstrate this, we describe a model in which language learning involves mapping native language phonological relationships to the non-native language, and we show how it can explain the results attributed to automatic activation of translation equivalents.
authors.affiliation: ICREA, Barcelona.|Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
authors.forename: Albert
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.affiliation: Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pannunzi
authors.affiliation: ICREA, Barcelona.|Department of Information and Communication Technologies, Center for Brain and Cognition, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
authors.forename: Gustavo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Deco
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, The University of Edinburgh.
authors.forename: Martin J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Pickering
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008960:Models, Psychological; D019303:Multilingualism; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Bilingual lexical access; Computational neuroscience; Parallel activation