Two experiments examined the role of phonological overlap and form similarity on cognate status effects in Chinese-Japanese bilinguals. Experiment 1 investigated cross-script priming in word-fragment completion by subjects who were either Chinese-Japanese bilingual (22 Chinese students studying in Japan) or Japanese monolingual (56 students). The subjects studied Chinese words and then completed test fragments written in Japanese Hiragana. The transcriptions of the test fragments into Kanji characters were manipulated: identical-cognate, visually similar-cognate, or non-cognate. The results indicated that the completion rate of primed fragments increased for the identical-cognates only. A Chinese lexical decision task was carried out by bilingual subjects (18 Chinese students) in Experiment 2. The decision that items were Chinese was made faster for identical-cognates than it was for visually similar-cognates and non-cognates. The results indicate that phonological overlap is not indispensable for cognate status effect and they are consistent with the non-selective access view of bilinguals.

Key words: lexical processing, Chinese-Japanese bilingual, cognate status, word- fragment completion