Category Interference in Translation and Picture Naming: Evidence for Asymmetric Connections Between Bilingual Memory Representations

Three experiments are reported in which picture naming and bilingual translation were performed in the context of semantically categorized or randomized lists. In Experiments 1 and 3 picture naming and bilingual translation were slower in the categorized than randomized conditions. In Experiment 2 this category interference effect in picture naming was eliminated when picture naming alternated with word naming. Taken together, the results of the three experiments suggest that in both picture naming and bilingual translation a conceptual representation of the word or picture is used to retrieve a lexical entry in one of the speaker′s languages. When conceptual activity is sufficiently great to activate a multiple set of corresponding lexical representations, interference is produced in the process of retrieving a single best lexical candidate as the name or translation. The results of Experiment 3 showed further that category interference in bilingual translation occurred only when translation was performed from the first language to the second language, suggesting that the two directions of translation engage different interlanguage connections. A model to account for the asymmetric mappings of words to concepts in bilingual memory is described.