Foreign language comprehension achievement: insights from the cognate facilitation effect

Revisiting the influence of phonological similarity on cognate processing: Evidence from Cantonese-Japanese bilinguals

The influences of shared orthography, semantics, and phonology on bilingual cognate processing have been investigated extensively. However, mixed results have been found regarding the effects of phonological similarity on L2 cognate processing. In addition, most existing studies examining the influence of phonological similarity on cognate processing have been conducted on alphabetic scripts, in which phonology and orthography are always associated. Hence, in this study, we recruited Cantonese-Japanese bilinguals who used two logographic scripts, traditional Chinese and Japanese Kanji, to examine the influence of phonological similarity on L2 cognate lexical decision. Importantly, these scripts allow the manipulation of phonological similarity using identical characters across both languages. In addition, we examined how word frequency and L2 proficiency modulate cognate processing. Results showed that although word frequency and L2 proficiency played important roles in cognate processing, there was minimal overall influence of phonological similarity on cognate lexical decision. The latter finding suggests that theoretical models of bilingual word recognition may need to be refined to enhance our understanding of cognate processing regarding the role of phonology among diverse bilingual populations.

Prevalence norms for 40,777 Catalan words: An online megastudy of vocabulary size

In this study, we present word prevalence data (i.e., the number of people who know a given word) for 40,777 Catalan words. An online massive visual lexical decision task involving more than 200,000 native speakers of this language was carried out. The characteristics of the participants as well as those of the words which mostly influence word knowledge were examined. Regarding the participants, the analysis of the data revealed that their age was the main factor influencing vocabulary size, followed by their educational level and other variables such as the number of languages spoken and their level of proficiency in Catalan. Concerning the words, by far the most determining factor was lexical frequency, with a minor influence of both length and the size of the orthographic neighborhood. These data mainly agree with those reported in other languages in which the same variables have been analyzed (Dutch, English, and Spanish, thus far). Therefore, the list is increased with Catalan, a language which, due to its use in an essentially bilingual context, is of special interest to researchers interested in the field of bilingualism and second language acquisition.

Cross-language activation during word recognition in child second-language learners and the role of executive function

We investigated lexical retrieval processes in 4- to 6-year-old German-English bilinguals by exploring cross-language activation during second-language (L2) word recognition of cognates and noncognates in semantically related and unrelated contexts in young learners of English. Both button presses (reaction times and accuracies) and eye-tracking data (percentage looks to target) yielded a significant cognate facilitation effect, indicating that the children's performance was boosted by cognate words. Nonetheless, the degree of phonological overlap of cognates did not modulate their performance. Moreover, a semantic interference effect was found in the children's eye movement data. However, in these young L2 learners, cognate status exerted a comparatively stronger impact on L2 word recognition than semantic relatedness. Finally, correlational analyses on the cognate and noncognate performance and the children's executive function yielded a significant positive correlation between noncognate performance and their inhibitory control, suggesting that noncognate processing depended to a greater extent on inhibitory control than cognate processing.

Changes in Native Sentence Processing Related to Bilingualism: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

The native language changes as a result of contact with a second language, and the pattern and degree of such change depend on a variety of factors like the bilingual experience or the linguistic level. Here, we present a systematic review and meta-analysis of works that explore variations in native sentence comprehension and production by comparing monolinguals and bilinguals. Fourteen studies in the meta-analysis provided information regarding the bilingual experience and differences at the morphosyntactic level using behavioral methods. Overall, we observed that first language processing is subject to small transformations in bilinguals that occur in sentence comprehension and production. The magnitude of the changes depended on bilingual experiences, but only length of residence in an L2 setting predicted the degree of change, where shorter length of residence was associated with larger changes. Results are discussed and related to the cognitive processes that potentially cause the transformations in the first language. The present work reveals some limitations in the field that should be addressed in future studies to better understand the mechanisms behind language attrition.

Noun-phrase production as a window to language selection: An ERP study

Characterising the time course of non-native language production is critical in understanding the mechanisms behind successful communication. Yet, little is known about the modulating role of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) on the temporal unfolding of non-native production and the locus of target language selection. In this study, we explored CLI effects on non-native noun phrase production with behavioural and neural methods. We were particularly interested in the modulation of the P300 as an index for inhibitory control, and the N400 as an index for co-activation and CLI. German late learners of Spanish overtly named pictures while their EEG was monitored. Our results indicate traceable CLI effects at the behavioural and neural level in both early and late production stages. This suggests that speakers faced competition between the target and non-target language until advanced production stages. Our findings add important behavioural and neural evidence to the underpinnings of non-native production processes, in particular for late learners.

The effects of language and emotionality of stimuli on vocabulary learning

Learning new content and vocabulary in a foreign language can be particularly difficult. Yet, there are educational programs that require people to study in a language they are not native speakers of. For this reason, it is important to understand how these learning processes work and possibly differ from native language learning, as well as to develop strategies to ease this process. The current study takes advantage of emotionality-operationally defined as positive valence and high arousal-to improve memory. In two experiments, the present paper addresses whether participants have more difficulty learning the names of objects they have never seen before in their foreign language and whether embedding them in a positive semantic context can help make learning easier. With this in mind, we had participants (with a minimum of a B2 level of English) in two experiments (43 participants in Experiment 1 and 54 in Experiment 2) read descriptions of made-up objects-either positive or neutral and either in their native or a foreign language. The effects of language varied with the difficulty of the task and measure used. In both cases, learning the words in a positive context improved learning. Importantly, the effect of emotionality was not modulated by language, suggesting that the effects of emotionality are independent of language and could potentially be a useful tool for improving foreign language vocabulary learning.

Changes in the Sensitivity to Language-Specific Orthographic Patterns With Age

How do bilingual readers of languages that have similar scripts identify a language switch? Recent behavioral and electroencephalographic results suggest that they rely on orthotactic cues to recognize the language of the words they read in ambiguous contexts. Previous research has shown that marked words with language-specific letter sequences (i.e., letter sequences that are illegal in one of the two languages) are recognized more easily and faster than unmarked words. The aim of this study was to investigate sensitivity to markedness throughout childhood and early adulthood by using a speeded language decision task with words and pseudowords. A large group of Spanish-Basque bilinguals of different ages (children, preteenagers, teenagers and adults) was tested. Results showed a markedness effect in the second language across all age groups that changed with age. However, sensitivity to markedness in the native language was negligible. We conclude that sensitivity to orthotactics does not follow parallel developmental trend in the first and second language.

Better to Be Alone than in Bad Company: Cognate Synonyms Impair Word Learning

The effects of cognate synonymy in L2 word learning are explored. Participants learned the names of well-known concrete concepts in a new fictional language following a picture-word association paradigm. Half of the concepts (set A) had two possible translations in the new language (i.e., both words were synonyms): one was a cognate in participants’ L1 and the other one was not. The other half of the concepts (set B) had only one possible translation in the new language, a non-cognate word. After learning the new words, participants’ memory was tested in a picture-word matching task and a translation recognition task. In line with previous findings, our results clearly indicate that cognates are much easier to learn, as we found that the cognate translation was remembered much better than both its non-cognate synonym and the non-cognate from set B. Our results also seem to suggest that non-cognates without cognate synonyms (set B) are better learned than non-cognates with cognate synonyms (set A). This suggests that, at early stages of L2 acquisition, learning a cognate would produce a poorer acquisition of its non-cognate synonym, as compared to a solely learned non-cognate. These results are discussed in the light of different theories and models of bilingual mental lexicon.

How do Spanish speakers read words? Insights from a crowdsourced lexical decision megastudy

Vocabulary size seems to be affected by multiple factors, including those that belong to the properties of the words themselves and those that relate to the characteristics of the individuals assessing the words. In this study, we present results from a crowdsourced lexical decision megastudy in which more than 150,000 native speakers from around 20 Spanish-speaking countries performed a lexical decision task to 70 target word items selected from a list of about 45,000 Spanish words. We examined how demographic characteristics such as age, education level, and multilingualism affected participants' vocabulary size. Also, we explored how common factors related to words like frequency, length, and orthographic neighbourhood influenced the knowledge of a particular item. Results indicated important contributions of age to overall vocabulary size, with vocabulary size increasing in a logarithmic fashion with this factor. Furthermore, a contrast between monolingual and bilingual communities within Spain revealed no significant vocabulary size differences between the communities. Additionally, we replicated the standard effects of the words' properties and their interactions, accurately accounting for the estimated knowledge of a particular word. These results highlight the value of crowdsourced approaches to uncover effects that are traditionally masked by small-sampled in-lab factorial experimental designs.

Lexical organization of language-ambiguous and language-specific words in bilinguals

Previous research has shown the importance of sublexical orthographic cues in determining the language of a given word when the two languages of a bilingual reader share the same script. In this study, we explored the extent to which cross-language sublexical characteristics of words—measured in terms of bigram frequencies—constrain selective language activation during reading. In Experiment 1, we investigated the impact of language-nonspecific and language-specific orthography in letter detection using the Reicher–Wheeler paradigm in a seemingly monolingual experimental context. In Experiment 2, we used the masked translation priming paradigm in order to better characterize the role of sublexical language cues during lexical access in bilinguals. Results show that bilinguals are highly sensitive to statistical orthographic regularities of their languages and that the absence of such cues promotes language-nonspecific lexical access, whereas their presence partially reduces parallel language activation. We conclude that language coactivation in bilinguals is highly modulated by sublexical processing and that orthographic regularities of the two languages of a bilingual are a determining factor in lexical access.