Very few studies exist on the role of cross-language similarities in cognate word
acquisition. Here we sought to explore, for the first time, the interplay of orthography (O) and
phonology (P) during the early stages of cognate word acquisition, looking at children and
adults with the same level of foreign language proficiency, and by using two variants of the
word-association learning paradigm (auditory learning method vs. auditory + written method).
Eighty participants (forty children and forty adults, native speakers of European Portuguese
[EP]), learned a set of EP-Catalan cognate words and non-cognate words. Among the cognate
words, the degree of orthographic and phonological similarity was manipulated. Half of the
children and adult participants learned the new words via an L2 auditory and written-L1 word
association method, while the other half learned the same words only through an L2 auditoryL1
word association method. Both groups were tested in an auditory recognition task and a
go/no-go lexical decision task. Results revealed a disadvantage for children in comparison to
adults, which was reduced in the auditory learning method. Furthermore, there was an
advantage for cognates relative to non-cognates regardless of the age of participants.
Importantly, there were modulations in cognate word processing as a function of the degree of
O and P overlap which were restricted to children. The findings are discussed in light of the
most relevant bilingual models of word recognition.This research was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013),
University of Minho, and was funded by the FCT (Foundation for Science and Technology)
through the state budget, with reference IF / 00784/2013 / CP1158 / CT0013. The study has
also been partially supported by the FCT and the EP Ministry of Science, Technology and
Higher Education through national funds, and co-financed by FEDER through
COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653).
It has also been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness
(PCIN-2015-165-C02-02).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
