Non-cognate translation priming effects in the same–different task: evidence for the impact of “higher level” information

Norris and colleagues have proposed that priming effects observed in the masked prime same–different task are based solely on pre-lexical orthographic information. This proposal was evaluated by examining translation priming effects from non-cognate translation equivalents using both Spanish–English and Japanese–English bilinguals in the same–different task. Although no priming was observed for Spanish–English bilinguals, who also produced very little translation priming in a lexical decision task, significant priming was observed for Japanese–English bilinguals. These results indicate that, although most of the priming in the same–different task has an orthographic basis, other types of priming effects can emerge. Therefore, while the masked prime same–different task provides a good way of investigating the nature of orthographic coding, it, like the sandwich priming technique, can also be influenced by higher level information.