Mental Representation of Cognates/Noncognates in Persian-Speaking EFL Learners

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mental representation of cognate and noncognate translation pairs in languages with different scripts to test the prediction of dual lexicon model (Gollan, Forster, & Frost, ۱۹۹۷). Two groups of Persian-speaking English language learners were tested on cognate and noncognate translation pairs in Persian-English and English-Persian directions with lexical decision task through masked priming. The findings of the study showed a high level of priming only for cognates with L۱ primes. This supports dual lexicon model in the sense that it confirms the role of orthography in establishing shared lexical entries for cognates. Noncognates showed a different pattern from what is predicted by this model.

Keywords:

mental representation , priming effect , masked priming paradigm , cognates/noncognates , dual lexical model