Cross-language phonological activation in bilingual visual word recognition: A meta-analysis.

Numerous studies have investigated whether phonological activation in the bilingual lexicon is selective or non-selective, using the classic masked priming paradigm that manipulates the phonological relatedness between primes and targets across two languages. The priming effects, however, are mixed: some studies reported reduced reaction times due to the homophone primes, while others observed non-significant priming. In this meta-analysis, we sought to systematically examine whether there is indeed cross-language phonological priming and to identify the factors that may moderate its magnitude. Analyzing 75 effects from 23 articles, we observed a significant, facilitative phonological priming effect (standardized mean difference Hedge's g = 0.45, SE = 0.07, p <.0001, 95% CI = [0.32, 0.58]), hence supporting the hypothesis of non-selective activation. The moderators examined included priming direction (L1-to-L2 vs. L2-to-L1), task type (lexical decision vs. word naming), script distance (within- vs. cross-script), stimulus-onset-asynchrony (SOA), inter-stimulus interval (ISI), number of participants, as well as number of items per condition. Results revealed a significant effect of task type in cross-script studies. Specifically, the word-naming task produces a smaller priming effect than the lexical decision task. Moreover, the priming effect increases as the number of items in a condition increases. These results collectively suggested that phonological activation in the bilingual lexicon is nonselective, and the effect size is dependent upon task demands and statistical power, essential to a dual-language setting and in cross-language studies.