Imageability Effects in Normal Bilingual Adults: Evidence from Naming to
Definition and Semantic Priming Tasks

Kiran, Swathi and Tuchtenhagen, Julie
Imageability Effects in Normal Bilingual Adults: Evidence from Naming to
Definition and Semantic Priming Tasks. In Clinical Aphasiology Conference: Clinical Aphasiology Conference (2004 : 34th : Park City, UT : May 2004) / : (2004).

Abstract

Imageability effects were measured in normal Spanish/English bilingual adults across a
naming to definition task and a semantic priming task. The targets in both tasks were
either concrete or abstract nouns and the words were translation equivalents in the two
languages. Accuracy in both languages and for both levels of imageability was measured
during the naming to definition task. Reaction times to judge relatedness of word pairs in
the semantic priming task were also measured. Results indicated that across tasks,
performance was better in English than Spanish indicating an English dominance in the
bilingual adults. Additionally, across tasks and languages, responses were faster and more
accurate for concrete words than abstract words. These results suggest that concrete
words are represented differently than abstract words across both languages in a bilingual
individual. Theoretical implications of the data will be discussed.