Examining strength of L2 form-meaning connection: A study of intralingual L2 semantic priming

Abstract The study investigated the strength of L2 form-meaning connections among advanced L2 speakers. Two unmasked intralingual L2 semantic priming experiments were conducted, with lexical decision and semantic categorization tasks. Thirty-eight native English speakers and 40 advanced Chinese learners of English were tested in each task. The stimuli involved L2 word targets that were preceded by either a related L2 prime or an unrelated one. Previous research has used the lexical decision task in this investigation, and the semantic task was also used in the present study to boost the involvement of conceptual connections in L2 processing. Consistent with previous findings, native English speakers showed a reliable priming effect in both tasks, but English L2 speakers showed no priming effect in either task. No task effect was found in either group. The findings provided further evidence for a weaker L2 form-meaning connection among advanced L2 speakers.