Cognate beginnings to bilingual lexical acquisition

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Bilingual lexical acquisition is influenced by various factors.
• Cognates, words with shared etymological origins across languages, are hypothesized to facilitate word learning.
• Previous research suggests cognateness aids bilinguals, but the precise mechanisms and moderating factors require further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose and test an account where language co-activation accelerates word-learning instance accumulation in bilinguals.
• To investigate whether the benefit of cognates on lexical acquisition differs based on language exposure levels.
• To determine if cognate facilitation is greater for words in the lower-exposure language compared to the higher-exposure language.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Bayesian Item Response Theory to model acquisition trajectories.
• Analyzed data from 366 bilingual infants (12-32 months old) learning Catalan and Spanish.
• Included 604 Catalan-Spanish word translations in the dataset.

Main Results:

• Found significantly larger cognate facilitation for words in the lower-exposure language (d = .276).
• Observed minimal cognate facilitation for words in the higher-exposure language (d = .022).
• Results support the hypothesis that language co-activation influences cognate effects.

Conclusions:

• Language co-activation accelerates bilingual lexical acquisition, particularly for words in the less dominant language.
• The study provides evidence for a language exposure-moderated account of cognateness effects in bilingual development.
• Findings highlight the importance of considering language exposure levels when examining the role of cognates in bilingual word learning.