ABSTRACT

The cognate advantage in bilingual children varies in strength across groups and individuals, in particular on receptive measures (e.g. picture-identification). This variation may be due to children’s developing ability to benefit from cognates in such tasks, yet longitudinal studies of this phenomenon, especially with older children, are rare. Using longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of picture-identification performance in French and English from 37 bilingual children attending a dual language program in France, this study investigates the cognate advantage across a wide range of ages (6–13 years old). The influence of children’s relative exposure on the cognate advantage is also investigated. We find that significant differences in cognate versus non-cognate performance emerge only after the first years of elementary school. Children show marked growth in late elementary and middle school years, but only on the English task. The strength of the cognate advantage in picture-ID is inversely related to exposure to that language. These findings are discussed in relation to the nature of these children’s exposure and properties of cognates in the two languages. Implications for dual language pedagogy are also discussed.

摘要

双语儿童的同源优势因群体和个人而异，特别是在接受能力方面（例如图片识别）。这种差异可能是由于儿童在此类任务中受益于同源物的发展能力，但对这种现象的纵向研究，特别是对于年龄较大的儿童，很少见。本研究对在法国参加双语课程的 37 名双语儿童的法语和英语图片识别性能进行纵向和横断面分析，调查了广泛年龄（6-13 岁）的同源优势。还研究了儿童相对暴露对同源优势的影响。我们发现只有在小学一年级之后才会出现同源与非同源表现的显着差异。孩子们在小学和中学后期表现出显着的成长，但仅限于英语任务。图片 ID 中同源优势的强度与接触该语言成反比。讨论了这些发现与这些儿童接触的性质和两种语言中同源词的特性有关。还讨论了双语教学法的意义。