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Facilitated Orthographic and Semantic Cognate Processing in Bilinguals
Poster Session B, Friday, September 12, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Field House
Lucia Z-Rivera1, Michaela R Brooks1, Cory McCabe2, Jeremy J Purcell1, William W Graves2, Donald J. Bolger1; 1University of Marylan, 2Rutgers University
How words and concepts are stored in the brain and accessed during language use is a central question in cognitive science (Poeppel & Idsardi, 2022). This becomes more complex in bilinguals, who manage and switch between two languages effortlessly. One way to explore this phenomenon is through the study of cognate words, which provide a unique crosslinguistic overlap for understanding how bilinguals represent and process coactivated languages (Dijkstra et al., 2010; Roembke et al., 2024; Von Holzen et al., 2019). The Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus (BIA+) model suggests that bilinguals recognize cognates faster than non-cognate words due to their shared orthographic and semantic properties (Dijkstra et al., 2019). However, this facilitation effect is not always consistent and may depend on the degree of orthographic overlap and individual factors like language proficiency and age of acquisition (Hsieh et al., 2021; Schwartz & Tarin, 2021). Building on these findings, the present study investigated how sensitivity to orthographic overlap modulates semantic and orthographic (spelling) processing across bilinguals compared to monolinguals. Thirty-five volunteers participated in the study, including 14 Spanish–English bilinguals (mean age = 23.6, SD = 5.1) and 21 English monolinguals (mean age = 21.9, SD = 4.6). Participants completed two tasks in English. In Experiment 1, the Spelling Task, participants listened to audio recordings and provided written responses by spelling the words they heard. In Experiment 2, the LOWKAT (Level of Word Knowledge Assessment Task), they were asked to demonstrate their knowledge of a list of cognates and noncognates by providing a definition or synonym or using the word in a sentence. In Experiment 1, we found a significant interaction between group and spelling time (F(1, 33) = 6.02, p = .02). Post hoc comparisons showed that bilinguals were significantly faster at spelling cognates with high compared to low orthographic similarity, defined here as the similarity between the English word and its Spanish translation (mean difference = 0.56, SE = 0.14, t= 3.996, p = .002). No significant differences were found among monolinguals across similarity levels. In Experiment 2, we found significant group and cognate status effects on word knowledge responses. Monolinguals were more likely than bilinguals to provide a definition (Estimate = 0.87, 95% CrI [0.15, 1.61]) and a synonym (Estimate = 1.16, 95% CrI [0.54, 1.77]). Additionally, Bilinguals were more likely to use definitions and synonyms for cognates compared to noncognates (Definition: Estimate = 0.47, 95% CrI [0.11, 0.85]; Synonym: Estimate = 0.76, 95% CrI [0.36, 1.15]). These results together suggest that orthographic overlap in cognates facilitates access to both form and meaning in bilingual lexical processing. Moreover, the cognate facilitation effect appears to extend beyond early lexical access, persisting in offline tasks. This may reflect stronger or more readily accessible conceptual representations for cognates in bilinguals.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Meaning: Lexical Semantics