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Interference Of L1 English In L2 French Lexical Processing, Sarah Kuhn

Honors Capstone Projects - All

This study examines the interference, if any, caused by a first language (specifically English) in the processing of lexical items in a second language (French). Participants performed a computer-based translation recognition task where they were asked whether a pair of words, one French and the other English, represented an acceptable translation. Six different types of critical pairs were randomly alternated with actual translation pairs and unrelated distractor pairs. Each of the different categories of critical pairs had a different relationship with the L1 word, the L2 word, or both. Participants’ scores on this task were then analyzed to determine the …