Spelling-sound knowledge in the context of multilingualism: is lexical access selective or nonselective?

The present study investigates shared phonological information and selectivity during lexical access in Brazilian Portuguese-English unbalanced bilinguals, learners of Korean as an L3. Participants took part in a word naming task which used L2 primes with targets from the L3 at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of 140ms and 250ms. The results show a significant facilitation effect in word naming when an English prime was presented in comparison with control primes. Additionally, a significant facilitation effect was also seen in trials in which the primes were presented at a 250ms SOA in relation to a 140ms SOA. Taken together, the results indicate that participants’ spelling-sound knowledge of L2 English was activated during the reading aloud of words in L3 Korean, which indicates nonselectivity in lexical access and a shared mental lexicon across languages.