Part-set cuing across languages: Evidence for both word- and concept-mediated inhibition depending on language dominance

The nature of associations between related words of different languages was investigated, using the part-set cuing procedure. Bilingual subjects generated, in English or in Turkish, instances from semantic categories such as four-footed animals, and during generation they heard some instances as cues (again in English or in Turkish) from the same category or a different category (experiments 1 and 2) or they heard nothing (experiment 1 only). Consistent with previous findings, hearing relevant instances inhibited generation of other instances when the cue and generation languages were the same. More interestingly, inhibition occurred also when the cue and generation languages were different and an asymmetry emerged in such cases: cues in the subjects' dominant language gave rise to similar effects regardless of generation language, whereas cues in the subjects' weaker language gave rise to a greater effect when generation and cue languages did not match, suggesting concept-mediated inhibition in the former case and word-mediated inhibition in the latter case.