Not just semantics: Strong frequency and weak cognate effects on semantic association in bilinguals

• Published in: Memory & cognition Vol. 38; no. 6; pp. 723 - 739
• Main Authors: Antón-Méndez, Inés, Gollan, Tamar H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer-Verlag 01.09.2010; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animal cognition; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Bilingualism; Bilingualism. Multilingualism; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Psychology; Cues; Disadvantages; Experiments; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Language; Multilingualism; Paired-Associate Learning; Psycholinguistics; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Ratings & rankings; Recognition, Psychology; Semantics; Translating; Word Association Tests; Semantic Association; Lexical Access; Bilingual Effect; Association Response; English Bilingual; Human; Semantic relation; Language; Word frequency; Semantics; Cognition; Bilingualism; Verbal association; Experimental study
• ISSN: 0090-502X; 1532-5946
• DOI: 10.3758/MC.38.6.723

To investigate the possibility that knowledge of two languages influences the nature of semantic representations, bilinguals and monolinguals were compared in a word association task. In Experiment 1, bilinguals produced less typical responses relative to monolinguals when given cues with a very common associate (e.g., given bride , bilinguals said “dress” instead of “groom”). In Experiment 2, bilinguals produced responses as typical as those of monolinguals when given cues with high-frequency associates, but not when given cues with lowfrequency associates. Bilinguals’ responses were also affected, to a certain extent, by the cognate status of the stimulus word pairs: They were more similar to monolinguals’ responses when the cue and its strongest associate were both cognates (e.g., minute-second is minuto-segundo in Spanish), as opposed to both being noncognates. Experiment 3 confirmed the presence of a robust frequency effect on bilingual but not on monolingual association responses. These findings imply a lexical locus for the bilingual effect on association responses and reveal the association task to be not quite as purely semantic as was previously assumed.