Three languages, one ECHO: Cognate effects in trilingual word recognition

TLDR

Lexical access in bilinguals is non‑selective, as evidenced by faster recognition of cognates than non‑cognates. The study examined whether this non‑selective access extends to trilinguals across Dutch, English, and German. Trilingual participants performed a German lexical‑decision task using control words, double cognates (Dutch‑German), and triple cognates (Dutch‑German‑English), and a monolingual control experiment ruled out stimulus artifacts. Dutch‑German cognates were processed faster than controls, and triple cognates even faster than double cognates, a triple‑cognate effect that persisted regardless of prior English reading, indicating that all known languages influence target‑language word recognition in trilinguals.

Abstract

Abstract Research on bilingual word recognition suggests that lexical access is non-selective with respect to language, i.e., that word representations of both languages become active during recognition. One piece of evidence is that bilinguals recognise cognates (words that are identical or similar in form and meaning in two languages) faster than non-cognates. The present study used cognates to investigate whether the non-selective access hypothesis holds also for trilinguals and three languages. Dutch-English-German trilinguals carried out a lexical decision task in their third language (German). The word materials included purely German control words, "double" cognates that overlapped in Dutch and German, but not in English, and "triple" cognates with the same form and meaning in Dutch, German, and English. Faster RTs were found for Dutch-German cognates than for control words, but additionally, "triple" cognates were processed even faster than "double" cognates. The "triple" cognate effect was not influenced by whether the participants had previously read an English text. A control experiment with German monolinguals confirmed that the effect was not an artifact of uncontrolled stimulus characteristics. Thus, independent of context, both the native language and another foreign non-target language influenced target language comprehension in trilinguals. This supports a view of language non-selective access implying all languages known to an individual may affect word activation and recognition.