- Marsh, Benjamin Uel;
- Snijder, Jean-Paul;
- Pulver, Marina;
- Schirmer, Janna;
- Horiuchi, Ashley;
- Reynoso, Brandon;
- Johnson, Veronica;
- Lee, Hyun Seo;
- Koskela, Natalie;
- Fajardo, Raul
Using Spanish-English bilingual Latino-Americans, this study
tested whether priming Latino or American cultural
representations facilitated the accessibility of the Spanish
meaning or English meaning of Spanish-English homographs.
Seventy-four participants were randomly assigned to a Latino
prime, American prime, or no prime condition. After being
primed, subjects performed an English lexical decision task
wherein they indicated whether a letter string formed an
English word. Homographs, English controls, and non-words
were included in the array. As predicted, there was a
significant prime condition by word type interaction, F(2,
70)= 5.48, p= .006, partial eta squared = .136, suggesting that
prime condition modulated reaction times to homographs.
Planned contrasts showed that participants in the Latino prime
condition had slower reaction times to homographs than
English controls, F(1, 22)= 4.84, p= .039, partial eta squared
= .180, suggesting that the Latino prime facilitated access to
homographs’ Spanish meaning.