The Time It Takes Bilinguals and Monolinguals to Draw Pictures and Write Words

In 4 experiments, picture-word translation was studied in Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals. In Experiment 1, bilinguals drew pictures or wrote English or Spanish words for picture or English or Spanish word stimuli. Equivalent increases in production onset latency for cross-language/modality translation were found. In Experiment 2, bilinguals and monolinguals drew pictures or wrote English words for picture or English word stimuli. Cross-modality translation equivalence was replicated, though bilinguals were slower than monolinguals overall. In Experiment 3, bilinguals and monolinguals were equivalent when they drew or wrote names from pictures as blocked tasks. In Experiment 4, bilinguals replicated Experiment 1 but were faster for blocked than mixed tasks, indicating that stimulus-processing uncertainty slows them. Results support a revised concept mediation model, with equivalent semantic access for pictures and words for bilinguals and monolinguals.