Pictures facilitate recognition and retrieval speeds of associations between wordsin a second language and referents
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to identify associative processes for words in a second language and their referents. ThirtyJapanese participants learned associative conditions for novel words in Chinese and pictorial referents (CP), as well asnovel words in Chinese and words in Japanese (CJ), against a condition of only novel words in Chinese (C). After thelearning phase, participants conducted 2 retrieval tasks for word recognition and 3 recognition tasks for source-monitoringof the referents. Correct answers for each recognition task were provided to participants after each trial. Although correctanswers in all the conditions gradually increased in both the recognition and retrieval tasks, there were no significantdifferences among these conditions. In contrast, recognition and retrieval speeds were faster for CP than CJ. These findingssuggest that pictures contribute to recognition and retrieval speeds of associations between words in a second languageand referents.