Does Spanish knowledge contribute to accurate English word spelling in adult bilinguals?

• Autores: Valeria M. Rigobon, Nuria Gutiérrez, Ashley A. Edwards, Daniel Abes, Laura M. Steacy, Donald L. Compton
• Localización: Bilingualism: Language and cognition, ISSN 1366-7289, Vol. 26, Nº 5, 2023, págs. 924-941
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Correctly spelling an English word requires a high-quality orthographic representation. When faced with spelling a complex word without a high-quality representation, spellers often rely on other knowledge sources (e.g., incomplete stored orthographic forms, phonological to orthographic relationships) to spell it. For bilinguals, another potentially facilitative source is knowledge of a word's lexical and sublexical representations in another language. In the current study we considered simultaneous effects of word-level (e.g., frequency, cognate status) and person-level (e.g., English spelling skill, prompting, bilingual status) predictors on college students’ complex English word spelling. Monolinguals (English; n = 42) significantly outperformed bilinguals (Spanish and English; n = 76) on non-cognate spelling; no group differences emerged for cognate spelling accuracy. Within bilinguals, significantly higher spelling performance on cognates compared to non-cognates suggests cognate facilitation, with no prompting effects. Findings expand an interdisciplinary framework of understanding bilinguals’ activation and use of cross-linguistic representations in spelling.