Language dominance predicts cognate effects and inhibitory control in young adult bilinguals

Abstract

Determining bilingual status has been complicated by varying interpretations of what it means to be bilingual and how to quantify bilingual experience. We examined multiple indices of language dominance (self-reported proficiency, self-reported exposure, expressive language knowledge, receptive language knowledge, and a hybrid), and whether these profiles related to performance on linguistic and cognitive tasks. Participants were administered receptive and expressive vocabulary tasks in English and Spanish, and a nonlinguistic spatial Stroop task. Analyses revealed a relation between dominance profiles and cognate and nonlinguistic Stroop effects, with somewhat different patterns emerging across measures of language dominance and variable type (continuous, categorical). Only a hybrid definition of language dominance accounted for cognate effects in the dominant language, as well as nonlinguistic spatial Stroop effects. Findings suggest that nuanced effects, such as cross-linguistic cognate effects in a dominant language and cognitive control abilities, may be particularly sensitive to operational definitions of language status.