Orthographic component of masked cognate priming in Chinese–Japanese bilinguals

Aims and objectives: Bilinguals recognize second language (L2) words more quickly when their forms are similar to their first language (L1) counterparts, known as cognates, due to cross-language orthographic and phonological similarities. However, it remains unclear how orthography functions independently from phonology because these two representations are difficult to separate in phonetic alphabetic scripts. To address this, we investigated cognates in Mandarin Chinese and Japanese, both of which employ logographic scripts where orthography does not directly correspond to phonology as it does in alphabetic scripts. Methodology: In a masked translation priming experiment, highly proficient Chinese–Japanese bilinguals performed a semantic categorization task on L2 Japanese words with four prime–target types: orthographically identical cognates, nonidentical cognates, noncognates, and unrelated pairs. We manipulated the prime durations (33 and 50 ms) to assess the orthographic components in masked priming. Data and analysis: We analyzed reaction times for semantic categorizations on L2 target words using a linear mixed-effects model. Findings/conclusions: The results showed that reaction times were shorter for L2 targets primed by L1 identical cognates than by noncognates at both prime durations, indicating a distinct processing advantage for identical cognates. For nonidentical cognates, facilitation appeared only with a 33-ms prime duration, suggesting that longer primes activate language-specific orthographic markers. Importantly, the results indicate that these orthographic markers are incorporated in the word-recognition system of bilinguals’ mental lexicon and influence the degree of language activation, particularly in the processing of logographic cognates by Chinese–Japanese bilinguals. Originality: This study is the first to demonstrate that orthographic markers in the mental lexicon of Chinese–Japanese bilinguals modulate the nonselective language activation during cognate processing. Significance: Our findings highlight the critical role of orthography in cognate processing, independent of phonological mediation.