Cognate effects in bilingual language comprehension tasks

Abstract

We examined cognate effects when late fluent Spanish/English bilingual speakers undergoing event-related potential recordings performed two tasks on word pairs. In an association decision task, participants decided whether or not pairs of Spanish words were related in meaning. In a translation decision task, they reported whether English target words were correct translations of Spanish primes. In both the tasks, word primes were either cognates or noncognates. In the translation decision task, faster and more accurate responses were associated with reduced N400 amplitudes in word pairs featuring a cognate. However, cognates did not modulate performance or event-related potentials in the association decision task. The results suggest that language coactivation in bilingual speakers is modulated by cognitive context.

Cognate and word class ambiguity effects in noun and verb processing

“…Yet, bilingual lexical activation is most apparent when both semantics and form overlap between languages, as in the case of cognates. Relative to noncognates, cognates are usually processed more quickly and more accurately, which is referred to as the cognate (facilitation) effect (e.g., Dijkstra et al, 1999;Dufour & Kroll, 1995;Lemhö fer et al, 2008;Yudes, Macizo, & Bajo, 2010). Cognate facilitation is not only found in L2, but also in L1 processing (Van Assche, Duyck, Hartsuiker, & Diependaele, 2009;Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002), although it is usually larger for processing in L2 than in L1.…”

Facilitative effect of cognate words vanishes when reducing the orthographic overlap: The role of stimuli list composition.

“…Thus, the higher the similarity of cognate words, the greater the effects. Converging evidence regarding language context influences on isolated cognate word processing was also shown by Yudes, Macizo, and Bajo in 2010. The authors compared the performance of proficient SpanishEnglish bilinguals in an association task versus a translation deci sion task. The typical cognate facilitation effect was observed in only the second task.…”

Peer Review #1 of "Towards a distributed connectionist account of cognates and interlingual homographs: evidence from semantic relatedness tasks (v0.1)"

“…Furthermore, there were no differences in the N400 component between the cognate trials and the control trials, which is thought to reflect the process of semantic integration and lexical factors such as word frequency (Yudes, Macizo & Bajo, 2010). However, Yudes et al (2010) included mainly non-identical cognates in this experiment: only eight of the 100 cognates were identically spelled in Spanish and English. Research has shown that the cognate facilitation effect is greater for identical cognates than for non-identical cognates (Duyck et al, 2007;Dijkstra et al, 2010;Van Assche et al, 2011;Comesaña et al, 2015).…”

“…In contrast, Yudes, Macizo, and Bajo (2010) recorded EEG signals while Spanish-English bilinguals completed a Spanish semantic relatedness task and found that their participants did not respond significantly more quickly or slowly to pairs that included a cognate than to pairs that included a control word. Furthermore, there were no differences in the N400 component between the cognate trials and the control trials, which is thought to reflect the process of semantic integration and lexical factors such as word frequency (Yudes, Macizo & Bajo, 2010). However, Yudes et al (2010) included mainly non-identical cognates in this experiment: only eight of the 100 cognates were identically spelled in Spanish and English.…”

“…Furthermore, the effect is often greater in the bilingual's second language than in their first language (Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002). In other words, Yudes et al (2010) may not have found evidence for a cognate facilitation effect because they used almost exclusively non-identical cognates and tested in the participants' native language.…”