The Effect of Proficiency in a Second Language on Lexical-Conceptual Representation

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relation between lexical and conceptual representations in the students learning English as a second language. Three groups of subjects with various years of studying English (ten English-major university students = EUS; fifteen high school students = HS; and eighteen junior high school students = JS) participated in an experiment, which employed the semantic priming paradigm with English and Japanese words as stimuli. Subjects were asked to decide as quickly as possible whether each target was a real word. After the task, a recognition test for stimulus words was conducted in order to examine the mode of word processing in such a bilingual situation. For EUS, priming effects were found in all conditions, but not for HS or JS. Results of the recognition test showed that retention was higher for HS and JS than EUS. Based on these findings, lexical representation and its processing in a second language were discussed. The present results appear to indicate that as second language is acquired, more direct links are formed between lexical and conceptual representations of the language. © 1994, The Japanese Psychological Association. All rights reserved.