The Effect of Bilingualism on Frisian-Dutch Children’s Reading: An Eye-Tracking Study

Bilingual adults are faster at reading cognates than non-cognates in both their first (L1) (Van Assche et al., 2009) and second language (L2) (Duyck et al., 2007). This cognate effect has been shown to be gradual in the L1: recognition was facilitated when words had higher degrees of cross-lingual similarity (Van Assche et al., 2009). Many studies on bilingual language processing have used this effect to indicate a co-activation of lexical representations in two languages. Recent research has shown that the gradual cognate facilitation effect can also be found in bilingual children’s receptive vocabulary (Bosma et al., 2016). However, it is still unknown to what extent it can be found in bilingual children’s reading. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether cognate facilitation can also be observed in bilingual children’s reading. To answer this question, Frisian-Dutch bilinguals (n = 18) between 9 and 12 years old performed a reading task in both of their languages....Show moreBilingual adults are faster at reading cognates than non-cognates in both their first (L1) (Van Assche et al., 2009) and second language (L2) (Duyck et al., 2007). This cognate effect has been shown to be gradual in the L1: recognition was facilitated when words had higher degrees of cross-lingual similarity (Van Assche et al., 2009). Many studies on bilingual language processing have used this effect to indicate a co-activation of lexical representations in two languages. Recent research has shown that the gradual cognate facilitation effect can also be found in bilingual children’s receptive vocabulary (Bosma et al., 2016). However, it is still unknown to what extent it can be found in bilingual children’s reading. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether cognate facilitation can also be observed in bilingual children’s reading. To answer this question, Frisian-Dutch bilinguals (n = 18) between 9 and 12 years old performed a reading task in both of their languages. All children had Dutch as their dominant reading language, but most of them spoke mainly Frisian at home. Identical cognates (e.g., boek-boek ‘book’), non-identical cognates (e.g., beam-boom ‘tree’), and non-cognates (e.g., beppe-oma ‘grandmother’) were presented in a sentence context, and eye-movements were recorded. The results showed a non-gradual cognate facilitation effect in Frisian: identical cognates were read faster than non-identical cognates and non-cognates. In Dutch, however, no cognate facilitation effect could be observed. These results show that bilingual children use their dominant reading language when reading in their non-dominant one.Show less

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The Effect of Bilingualism on Frisian-Dutch Children’s Reading: An Eye-Tracking Study