The Effect of Cognates on Cognitive Control in Late Sequential Multilinguals: A Bilingual Advantage?

Jorik Fidler,Katja Lochtman

doi:10.3390/bs9030025

Abstract

The present study investigated the influence of Dutch-German cognates resp. orthographic neighbors on controlled language processing (i.e., response inhibition). Two monolingual Stroop tasks (Dutch and German) were performed by Dutch-speaking participants who could and could not speak German, and by French-speaking participants who could speak German. The question is whether or not cognate language processing affects cognitive control, resulting in a possible bilingual advantage. In the German Stroop task, we found additional advantages in congruent, as well as incongruent, trials for the two Dutch-speaking groups, which postulates the existence of a cognate resp. orthographic neighbor facilitation effect, even when participants only know one of the two cognate languages. The findings are discussed in relation to two possible factors that can modulate the effect of bilingualism on cognitive control: cognateness and orthographic neighborhood. The results suggest the existence of a notification mechanism in the bilingual brain. This mechanism would notify the bilingual brain when dealing with cognates and orthographic neighbors.

Highlights

In bilingual brains, lexical items of different languages are stored in the mental lexicon [1].When late sequential bilinguals, multilinguals who have acquired their L1 language system from birth on and their L2 language system during or after adolescence, learn a second language, their brain has to be aware of the fact that there is already a language stored in that brain
We investigated two factors that can modulate the effect of bilingualism on cognitive control: cognateness on the one hand, and orthographic neighborhood on the other hand
The analysis of the Stroop task was by means of calculating reaction times (RT) and accuracy rates

Summary

Introduction

Lexical items of different languages are stored in the mental lexicon [1].When late sequential bilinguals, multilinguals who have acquired their L1 language system from birth on and their L2 language system during or after adolescence, learn a second language, their brain has to be aware of the fact that there is already a language stored in that brain. The bilingual brain needs a certain control mechanism, to prevent it from between-language interference, and to provide access to the right language during two-language processing [2] This controlled language processing, which in the literature is often referred to as language control, takes place in a neural language control network, involving the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the inferior parietal cortex, and the caudate nuclei in the basal ganglia [3,4,5]. The Language Mode Hypothesis [7], e.g., tries to point out when both languages are activated in the bilingual brain, and when language control is needed

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