Table 1_Enduring cognate facilitation: evidence for form-based transfer in bilingual word recognition.docx

They are generally processed faster than control words, an effect known as cognate facilitation. The current study set out to investigate whether long-term cognate facilitation in a multi-day practice paradigm is driven by shared mental representations or graded cross-linguistic similarity effects.

Dutch-English participants completed a visual lexical decision paradigm over five consecutive days, with testing on the first and fifth day in one language (L1 or L2) and practice on the intervening days in the other language. Target words included identical and non-identical cognates, non-cognate translation equivalents, controls, and non-words. While results showed a robust procedural practice effect across all word types, both identical and non-identical cognates exhibited a significantly larger cross-linguistic performance transfer than translation equivalents and control words.