Bilingual lexical access

Bilingual lexical access is an area of <a href="/facts/Psycholinguistics/6fGeNXHU">psycholinguistics</a> that studies the activation or retrieval process of the <a href="/facts/Mental_lexicon/2PHbluce">mental lexicon</a> for <a href="/facts/Bilingual/WgzhSW6h">bilingual</a> people.
Bilingual <a href="/facts/Lexical_access/MxfVm3gl">lexical access</a> can be understood as all aspects of the word processing, including all of the mental activity from the time when a word from one language is perceived to the time when all its <a href="/facts/Lexical_(semiotics)/EV2rqeBx">lexical</a> knowledge from the <a href="/facts/Target_language_(translation)/2foI82so">target language</a> is available. Research in this field seeks to fully understand these mental processes. Bilingual individuals have two mental lexical representations for an item or concept and can successfully select words from one language without significant interference from the other language. It is the field's goal to understand whether these dual representations interact or affect one another.
Bilingual lexical access researchers focus on the control mechanisms bilinguals use to suppress the language not in use when in a monolingual mode and the degree to which the related representations within the language not in use are activated. For example, when a <a href="/facts/Dutch_language/yIB5lbsx">Dutch</a>-<a href="/facts/English_language/tpkxGt7b">English</a> bilingual is asked to name a picture of a <a href="/facts/Dog/DvQVRVzy">dog</a> in English, they will come up with the English word dog. Bilingual lexical access is the mental process that underlies this seemingly simple task: the process that makes the connection between the idea of a dog and the word dog in the target language. While activating the English word dog, its Dutch equivalent (hond) is most likely also in a state of activation.

Bilingual lexical access open-in-new

Bilingual lexical access