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Language dominance predicts cognate effects and inhibitory control in young adult bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2018

JONATHAN J.D. ROBINSON ANTHONY  and
HENRIKE K. BLUMENFELD Open the ORCID record for HENRIKE K. BLUMENFELD [Opens in a new window]
JONATHAN J.D. ROBINSON ANTHONY*
Affiliation:
San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego, Joint Doctoral Program in Language & Communicative Disorders
HENRIKE K. BLUMENFELD
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
*
Address for correspondence: Jonathan J.D. Robinson Anthony, 5500 Campanile Dr. San Diego, CA 92182-1518[email protected]
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Abstract

Determining bilingual status has been complicated by varying interpretations of what it means to be bilingual and how to quantify bilingual experience. We examined multiple indices of language dominance (self-reported proficiency, self-reported exposure, expressive language knowledge, receptive language knowledge, and a hybrid), and whether these profiles related to performance on linguistic and cognitive tasks. Participants were administered receptive and expressive vocabulary tasks in English and Spanish, and a nonlinguistic spatial Stroop task. Analyses revealed a relation between dominance profiles and cognate and nonlinguistic Stroop effects, with somewhat different patterns emerging across measures of language dominance and variable type (continuous, categorical). Only a hybrid definition of language dominance accounted for cognate effects in the dominant language, as well as nonlinguistic spatial Stroop effects. Findings suggest that nuanced effects, such as cross-linguistic cognate effects in a dominant language and cognitive control abilities, may be particularly sensitive to operational definitions of language status.

Keywords

language dominancecognate effectnonlinguistic spatial Stroop effectinhibitory control
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , November 2019 , pp. 1068 - 1084
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

We thank Dr. Georg Matt for input on the statistical analyses, as well as members of the SDSU Bilingualism and Cognition Lab, especially Claire Duffy, Maryanne Sullivan, Katie Rodgers, Fernanda Manriquez, Amy Tellez, Stephanie Riera, Dorit Segal, Kayla Glaser, and Annie Ochoa. We also thank Dr. Ludovica Serratrice, Dr. Anat Prior and two anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback on a previous version of this manuscript. This project was in part supported by a California State University Sally Casanova Summer Research Scholarship, the Sheila and Jeffrey Lipinsky Family Doctoral Fellowship, and a San Diego Fellowship from UCSD to JRA, and a SDSU University Grant and Summer Undergraduate Research Grant to HB.

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