Interlingual interference in a color-naming task

Abstract

When bilinguals, presented with lists of words written in different colors, name the colors as quickly as possible, interference with color naming has been found to depend on the semantic similarity between the words and the correct response, whether these come from the same or from different languages. However, in the present study, when the interference word was the translation of the correct response interference was greatly reduced, a result not attributable to overt translation. An explanation in terms of a ‘priming’ effect is suggested. © 1968, Psychonomic Journals. All rights reserved.