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Since concepts can be regarded as associative links to lexical items, conceptual representations can be measured verbally by looking at word associations. Word associations from native speakers of Dutch and from native speakers of English were used to form two priming conditions for an associative-priming study with a lexical-decision task. Participants were a low-proficiency group of Dutch students of English, a high-proficiency group of Dutch students of English and a group of native speakers of English. Results showed variation between different (groups of) items, suggesting that highly proficient students of English perform native-like on items which have different connotations in Dutch and English, and that native speakers of English show inhibitory responses on items with backward associative strength, whereas both Dutch groups did not show this inhibition.