The current study examines how monolingual children and bilingual children with languages that are orthotactically similar and dissimilar learn novel words depending on their characteristics. We contrasted word learning for words that violate or respect the orthotactic legality of bilinguals’ languages investigating the impact of the similarity between those two languages. In Experiment 1, three groups of children around the age of 12 were tested: monolinguals, Spanish–Basque bilinguals (orthotactically dissimilar languages), and Spanish–Catalan bilinguals (orthotactically similar languages). After an initial word-learning phase, they were tested in a recognition task. While Spanish monolinguals and Spanish–Catalan bilingual children recognized illegal words worse than legal words, Spanish–Basque bilingual children showed equal performance in learning illegal and legal patterns. In Experiment 2, a replication study was conducted with two new groups of Spanish–Basque children (one group with high Basque proficiency and one group with a lower proficiency) and results indicated that the effects were not driven by the proficiency in the second language, as a similar performance on legal and illegal patterns was observed in both groups. These findings suggest that word learning is not affected by bilingualism as such, but rather depends on the specific language combinations spoken by the bilinguals.

中文翻译：

---

儿童单词学习的差异：双语还是语言经验？

目前的研究考察了单语儿童和双语儿童如何根据其特征学习新词。我们将单词学习与违反或尊重双语者语言的正字法合法性的单词进行对比，调查这两种语言之间相似性的影响。在实验 1 中，测试了三组 12 岁左右的儿童：单语者、西班牙语-巴斯克语双语者（正位不同的语言）和西班牙语-加泰罗尼亚语双语者（正位相似的语言）。在最初的单词学习阶段之后，他们在识别任务中进行了测试。虽然西班牙语单语者和西班牙语-加泰罗尼亚语双语儿童识别非法词比合法词更糟糕，西班牙-巴斯克双语儿童在学习非法和合法模式方面表现出相同的表现。在实验 2 中，对两组新的西班牙语-巴斯克儿童（一组巴斯克语熟练程度高，一组巴斯克语熟练程度低）进行了一项复制研究，结果表明效果不是由第二语言的熟练程度驱动的，因为在两组中都观察到了在合法和非法模式上的相似表现。这些发现表明，单词学习不受双语本身的影响，而是取决于双语者所讲的特定语言组合。对两组新的西班牙语-巴斯克儿童（一组巴斯克语熟练程度高，一组巴斯克语熟练程度低）进行了一项复制研究，结果表明，效果不是由第二语言的熟练程度驱动的，因为表现相似在两组中都观察到了合法和非法模式。这些发现表明，单词学习不受双语本身的影响，而是取决于双语者所讲的特定语言组合。对两组新的西班牙语-巴斯克儿童（一组巴斯克语熟练程度高，一组巴斯克语熟练程度低）进行了一项复制研究，结果表明，效果不是由第二语言的熟练程度驱动的，因为表现相似在两组中都观察到了合法和非法模式。这些发现表明，单词学习不受双语本身的影响，而是取决于双语者所讲的特定语言组合。