A tale of two lexical-decision tasks

As a probe into the degree of integration of the bilingual lexicon, a series of lexical-decision tasks was carried out in two bilingual speech communities with greatly differing linguistic, cultural, and socio-historical characteristics: Misiones province in northeastern Argentina (Portuguese-Spanish), and three indigenous communities in northern Ecuador (Quichua and the mixed language known as Media Lengua). In both cases the results suggest a tightly integrated bilingual lexicon, but the pattern of responses was qualitatively and quantitatively different for each group, to such an extent as to potentially challenge the assumption of universal validity for lexical decision tasks.