title: A robust demonstration of the cognate facilitation effect in first-language and second-language naming.
abstract: The cognate facilitation effect refers to the phenomenon that in bilinguals performance on various vocabulary tasks is enhanced for cross-linguistic cognates as opposed to noncognates. However, research investigating the presence of the cognate advantage in bilingual children remains limited. Most studies with children conducted to date has not included a control group or rigorously designed stimuli, which may jeopardize the validity and robustness of the emerging evidence. The current study addressed these methodological problems by examining performance in picture naming tasks in 34 4- to 7-year-old Spanish-English bilinguals and 52 Mandarin-English bilinguals as well as 37 English-speaking monolinguals who served as controls. Stimuli were controlled for phonology, word frequency, and length. The Spanish-English bilinguals performed better for cognates than for noncognates and exhibited a greater number of doublet responses (i.e., providing correct responses in both languages) in naming cognate targets than in naming noncognates. The control groups did not show differences in performance between the two sets of words. These findings provide compelling evidence that cross-linguistic similarities at the phonological level allow bootstrapping of vocabulary learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA. Electronic address: li.sheng@utexas.edu.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sheng
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
authors.forename: Boji Pak Wing
authors.initials: BP
authors.lastname: Lam
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cruz
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
authors.forename: Aislynn
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fulton
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D013060:Speech; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: Cognate; Cross-linguistic bootstrapping; Facilitation; Mandarin–English; Naming; Spanish–English