Unitization facilitates familiarity-based cross-language associative recognition

The unitization effect means a phenomenon in which familiarity can contribute to associative recognition judgments when pairs of items are treated as a single entity rather than two separate items. Cumulative evidences suggested that the unitization effect was not influenced by the type of language, and this effect could be generalized to bilinguals when they performed an associative recognition in their second language. In the present study, the influence of familiarity on cross-language associative retrieval under unitization and the underlying neurophysiological mechanism behind this effect were investigated. Participants completed two "study-test" tasks presented in intralinguistic (from Uygur to Uygur) or interlinguistic assignment (from Chinese to Uygur) respectively. The study showed that: (1) during intralinguistic assignments, both FN400 and LPC were found under unitization for balanced and unbalanced bilinguals, while an LPC but not FN400 was found under nonunitization. (2) During interlinguistic assignments, both FN400 and LPC were found under unitization for balanced bilinguals. However, an LPC but not FN400 was found under unitization for unbalanced bilinguals. Collectively, these results indicated that unitization facilitated familiarity to support cross-language retrieval. In particular, the effects of familiarity on cross-language retrieval were mediated by the second language proficiency.