Very few studies exist on the role of cross-language similarities in cognate word acquisition. Here we sought to explore, for the first time, the interplay of orthography (O) and phonology (P) during the early stages of cognate word acquisition, looking at children and adults with the same level of foreign language proficiency, and by using two variants of the word-association learning paradigm (auditory learning method vs. auditory + written method). Eighty participants (forty children and forty adults, native speakers of European Portuguese [EP]), learned a set of EP-Catalan cognate words and non-cognate words. Among the cognate words, the degree of orthographic and phonological similarity was manipulated. Half of the children and adult participants learned the new words via an L2 auditory and written-L1 word association method, while the other half learned the same words only through an L2 auditory-L1 word association method. Both groups were tested in an auditory recognition task and a go/no-go lexical decision task. Results revealed a disadvantage for children in comparison to adults, which was reduced in the auditory learning method. Furthermore, there was an advantage for cognates relative to non-cognates regardless of the age of participants. Importantly, there were modulations in cognate word processing as a function of the degree of O and P overlap which were restricted to children. The findings are discussed in light of the most relevant bilingual models of word recognition.

Previous studies on second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition with children showed that the use of a picture learning method favours the creation of direct links between the semantic system and new lexical representations at early stages of L2 acquisition (Comesaña et al., 2009). However, recent studies found that this influence seems to vary according to the cognate status of the words being learned (Comesaña et al., 2012), raising the question of how the type of words involved can modulate the lexical-semantic connections between the words of both languages in the bilingual memory. The main goal of the present study was to explore list composition effects in the establishment of L2 word-to-concept connections in Portuguese children by using a picture-based method. Results showed no influence of list composition in the establishment of L2 lexical-semantic connections when cognates have to be learned. Findings are discussed in light of relevant models of bilingual memory.

In this study, we explore if French-European Portuguese (EP)-speaking bilingual toddlers produce the same number of words as their monolingual peers, in French, in EP, or in both languages. Furthermore, we explore the link between language dominance and lexicon size. We tested 53 bilingual French-EP children, among which 16 were 16–18 months old, 16 were 24–25 months old and 21 were 30–35 months old. The parents completed the French and the EP Communicative Development Inventory (adaptations of MacArthur–Bates CDI [Fenson et al., 2007]), the PaBiQ (Tuller, 2015) to evaluate language dominance and the ASQ-3 (Squires et al., 2009) to assess their developmental stages. The total vocabulary (both language combined, TV?F+EP), the total vocabulary (TV) in each language (TV?EP and TV?F) and the conceptual vocabulary (CV) were calculated. These vocabulary measures were compared with the monolingual norms in French and EP. The results showed that almost all participants had the same performance in vocabulary acquisition as their monolingual peers in French and EP, measured through the CDI in each language respectively. Their TV?F+EP and CV exceeded the vocabulary of monolinguals and language dominance was correlated with vocabulary size.

L ’objectif de ce travail est d’évaluer le dédeveloppement lexical, précoce chez les enfants bilingues et d’explorer le lien possible entre la, taille du vocabulaire et les fonctions exécutives. Nous avons testé 15,bilingues français-portugais (7 de 16 mois et 8 de 24 mois). Leur, développement langagier a été évalué avec l'Inventaire du développement, communicatif français et portugais (adaptations du CDI MacArthur-Bates, Fenson et al., 2007). Des questionnaires parentaux ont été utilisés pour,évaluer la dominance linguistique (PaBiQ, Tuller, 2015), les stades de, développement (ASQ-3™, Squires et al., 2009) et les fonctions exécutives,(BRIEF-P, Gioia, Aspy, … Isquith, 2003). Nous avons calculé la taille du, vocabulaire dans chacune des langues, le vocabulaire total et le vocabulaire, conceptuel total et comparé avec les normes des monolingues. Presque, tous les participants ont un vocabulaire total dans chacune des langues,(français ou portugais) et un vocabulaire conceptuel total similaire à celui, des monolingues portugais et français. Leur vocabulaire total,(français+portugais) est par contre supérieur à celui des monolingues. Il, existe une corrélation entre la taille du vocabulaire et la mémoire de travail,(Stokes & Klee, 2009), mais aucune avec l'inhibition. Ces résultats donnent, un meilleur aperçu du processus de développement du langage bilingue.