Does phonological overlap of cognate words modulate cognate acquisition and processing in developing and skilled readers?

ABSTRACT

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 (40 children and 40 adults, native speakers of European Portuguese [EP]), learned a set of EP-Catalan cognate words and noncognate 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 noncognates 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 that were restricted to children. The findings are discussed in light of the most relevant bilingual models of word recognition.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.

Funding

This research was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and was funded by the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) through the state budget, with reference IF/00784/2013/CP1158/CT0013. The study has also been partially supported by the FCT and the EP Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and cofinanced by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). It has also been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PCIN-2015-165-C02-02).

Notes

¹ We cannot talk about a second language because the participants had already learned or were learning a second language at school, namely English.

² An anonymous reviewer wondered if the effects of cross-language overlap found in this study may be a result of differences across conditions in the degree of orthographic overlap between the experimental words and their English translations. Our participants had some knowledge of the English language because learning English is part of the compulsory school curriculum. The difference in ages between the two groups obviously makes the exposure to English higher for the adult group than for children (note that in Portugal, movies, for instance, are not dubbed). If exposure to English had any influence on participants’ performance, it would be observed mainly in the conditions in which the stimuli overlap in form with their English translations. Thus, to examine if this was the case, we decided to analyze the degree of orthographic overlap between our experimental Portuguese-Catalan words and their translation equivalents in English. Results revealed a higher degree of overlap in the O+P+ condition than in the O-P+ and O-P– conditions (ps < .01); whereas no difference was observed between O-P+ and O-P– conditions. We thus consider that the results obtained in our study concerning the effects of the degree of cross-language overlap (i.e., the degree of O and P similarity) cannot be attributed to this variable. On the one hand, if the similarity with English words was the cause of the effects of cross-language overlap, we should have observed that adult participants were the most affected by this variable (as they had more extensive knowledge and experience of English compared to children). On the contrary, the effects of cross-language overlap were restricted to children, who supposedly have a lower level of English proficiency than adults. On the other hand, if we look at the go/no-go lexical decision task, the effects of cross-language overlap reveal differences between the O-P+ and O-P– conditions. Of note, both conditions had the same degree of orthographic overlap with their English translations.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho, and was funded by the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology) through the state budget, with reference IF/00784/2013/CP1158/CT0013. The study has also been partially supported by the FCT and the EP Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and cofinanced by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). It has also been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (PCIN-2015-165-C02-02).