Cognate recognition by young multilingual language learners: The role of age and exposure

The present study set out to investigate the recognition of cognates by young multilingual learners of English as a foreign language. While there is a wealth of research on the role of cognates in vocabulary recognition by bilingual children, much less is known in relation to bilinguals learning a foreign language with limited exposure to that language. The specific research questions that guided the study were: (1) to what extent do young Spanish-Catalan bilingual learners of English recognise English cognate words over non-cognate words in the PPVT test? and (2) what are the respective roles of age (7 vs. 9 years) and amount of exposure to English in cognate word recognition and non-cognate word recognition? Do these factors have the same roles in non-cognate word recognition? To answer these questions, the study examined the extent to which young learners recognised cognates in the Peabody picture vocabulary test (PPVT) (Dunn & Dunn 2007). Participants were 170 children distributed into a group of 7 year-olds and a group of 9 year-olds. They were all Spanish-Catalan bilinguals, so that English was their third language. The results of the analyses indicated that age was the strongest determinant of cognate word recognition, whereas hours of exposure was the stronger predictor of non-cognate word recognition.