Memory & Cognition 
2010, 38 (6), 723-739 
doi:10.3758/MC.38.6.723 
 
 

Not just semantics: Strong frequency  
and weak cognate effects  

on semantic association in bilinguals 
Inés Antón-Méndez 

Utrecht University, Netherlands 
University of New England, Australia 

Tamar H. Gollan 
University of California, San Diego, USA 

 
 
 
 
 
Author Notes 

Both authors made an equal contribution to this paper and are listed in alphabetical order. 
This research was supported by an R01 from NICHD (HD050287) and by a Career 
Development Award from NIDCD (DC00191) both awarded to Tamar H. Gollan, by an R01 
from NIH (HD051030) awarded to Victor S. Ferreira, and by a P50 (AG05131) from 
NIH/NIA to the University of California. Correspondence concerning this article should be 
addressed to Inés Antón-Méndez, Discipline of Psychology, SBCSS, Univ. of New England, 
Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia (e-mail: iantonme@une.edu.au).  



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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Abstract 

To investigate the possibility that knowledge of two languages influences the nature of 
semantic representations, bilinguals and monolinguals were compared in a word-association 
task. In Experiment 1, bilinguals produced less typical responses relative to monolinguals 
when given cues with a very common associate (e.g., given bride bilinguals said dress 
instead of groom). In Experiment 2, bilinguals produced responses as typical as those of 
monolinguals when given cues with high-frequency associates, but not for cues with low-
frequency associates. Additionally, bilinguals responses were also affected to a certain extent 
by the cognate status of the stimulus word pairs – they were more similar to monolinguals’ 
responses when the cue and its strongest associate were both cognates (e.g., minute-second is 
minuto-segundo in Spanish), as opposed to both noncognates. Experiment 3 confirmed the 
presence of a robust frequency effect on bilingual but not on monolingual association 
responses. These findings imply a lexical locus for the bilingual effect on association 
responses, and reveal the association task to be not quite as purely semantic as previously 
assumed. 

 
 
 

Key words: Lexical access, bilingualism, semantic association, cognate, frequency.



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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Not just semantics: 

Strong frequency and weak cognate effects on semantic association in bilinguals 

Recent years have brought a flurry of papers reporting differences between bilinguals and 
monolinguals in a number of cognitive tasks, including bilingual advantages (tasks that 
bilinguals perform more quickly or efficiently than monolinguals), bilingual disadvantages 
(tasks that bilinguals perform more slowly and with more errors than monolinguals), and 
sometimes simply qualitative differences (neither favorable nor unfavorable). Where 
population differences arise, much can be learned by attempting to identify the locus of these 
differences in well-articulated models of language processing both for understanding the 
populations themselves, and for further understanding the nature of linguistic representations.  

To explain processing differences between bilinguals and monolinguals it is, thus, 
necessary to have a detailed specification of both bilingual and monolingual language 
processing models. Partly overlapping cognitive mechanisms have been proposed to explain 
bilingual advantages and disadvantages. Bilingual advantages have been assumed to 
implicate general mechanisms of cognitive control in bilingual language use. By virtue of 
having to control which language they speak, bilinguals may develop more efficient task-
monitoring and task-control mechanisms (for a recent review see Bialystok, Craik & Luk, 
2008; Costa, Hernández, Costa, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009).  

Bilingual disadvantages in language processing tasks, on the other hand, could reflect the 
downside of this same mechanism (i.e., delays in lexical access associated with having to 
manage dual-language activation; for review see Kroll, Bobb, Misra, & Guo, 2008), or 
alternatively, bilingual disadvantages could simply result from a relative frequency-lag in 
terms of use of words in each language relative to monolinguals (for detailed discussion see 
Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008). By virtue of speaking each language only some 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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of the time, bilinguals necessarily use each language less often than monolingual users of 
those same languages. Indeed the disadvantages associated with bilingualism are most 
apparent during the retrieval of low-frequency words (Gollan et al., 2008; Ivanova & Costa, 
2008).  

Bilingual disadvantages have been found in children who named pictures with less-
accuracy than monolingual children (e.g., Yan & Nicoladis, in press), and scored lower than 
monolinguals in receptive vocabulary tests (e.g., Doyle, Champagne, & Segalowitz, 1978; 
Nicoladis, 2003, 2006; Nicoladis & Genesee, 1996; Oller, Pearson, & Cobo-Lewis, 2007; 
Pearson, 1998; Pearson, Fernández, & Oller, 1993; Rosenblum & Pinker, 1983). Similarly, 
young adult bilinguals recognized written words more slowly than monolinguals in a lexical 
decision task (Ransdell & Fischler, 1987), named pictures less accurately and more slowly 
(e.g., Gollan & Silverberg, 2001; Gollan et al., 2008; Roberts, Garcia, Desrochers, & 
Hernandez, 2002), and scored lower than matched monolinguals in standardized tests of 
receptive vocabulary (Bialystok, et al., 2008; Portocarrero, Burright, & Donovick, 2007). In 
some studies both the advantages and disadvantages of bilingualism were reported in the 
same participants providing a powerful demonstration that the observed population effects 
are in fact related to knowledge of two languages which, on the one hand, improves executive 
control abilities and, on the other hand, reduces the efficiency of lexical retrieval (e.g., 
Bialystok et al., 2008). 

Another possibility is that some differences between bilinguals and monolinguals could 
arise at the level of semantic processing. Ameel, Malt, Stoms and van Assche (2009) asked 
participants to rate typicality of a number of bottle-like or plate-like objects according to how 
well they matched different names (e.g., bottle versus container and plate versus bowl). 
Bilinguals provided ratings in both languages, and separate monolingual speakers of each of 
the bilinguals’ two languages also provided ratings. Typicality ratings were correlated more 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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strongly across languages in bilinguals’ ratings than they were across languages in 
monolinguals’ ratings. Further analyses suggested that bilinguals drop language-specific 
boundary exemplars from categories resulting in less complex categories for bilinguals than 
for monolinguals with fewer dimensions needed to differentiate between them (e.g., what 
makes a jar a jar instead of a bottle). The differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in 
the representation of category boundaries seem to suggest an effect of bilingualism at a 
semantic level. This conclusion raises a question as to whether some previously reported 
differences between bilinguals and monolinguals that were attributed to lexical processing 
could instead be taken as evidence of between-group differences in representation of 
meaning.  

One such result is the finding that bilinguals are relatively more disadvantaged in the 
semantic than in the letter versions of the verbal fluency task (even when bilinguals are tested 
only in their more dominant language e.g., Rosselli et al., 2000; Gollan, Montoya & Werner, 
2002). In the semantic fluency task, speakers generate members of a meaning-based category 
(e.g., animals), whereas in the letter fluency task speakers generate members of a letter or 
sound-based category (e.g., words that begin with S). Note that semantic fluency is generally 
easier than letter fluency for monolinguals (but see Azuma et al., 1997), thus it is not the case 
that bilinguals are disadvantaged only on the “more difficult” fluency task – in fact the 
opposite may be said to occur. The greater effect of bilingualism on semantic than on letter 
fluency may reflect greater competition for selection during semantic than letter fluency 
(Gollan et al., 2002; Rosselli et al., 2000). Translation equivalents may be more difficult to 
reject in semantic fluency because they are category exemplars, whereas in letter fluency 
translation equivalents rarely begin with the same letter (Sandoval, Gollan, Ferreira, & 
Salmon, in press).  Alternatively, executive control advantages in bilinguals may offset 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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bilingual disadvantages in lexical retrieval particularly in letter fluency which may tap 
executive control relatively more than semantic fluency (Luo, Luk, & Bialystok, 2010).  

However, the greater bilingual disadvantage in semantic than in letter fluency also seems 
consistent with proposals that knowledge of more than one language influences the way 
semantic representations are organized. Bilinguals may be more likely to think of category 
exemplars that are high-frequency in the non-target language but low-frequency in the target 
language. Different languages/cultures will activate slightly different category exemplars. For 
example, camel is a common animal in Israel but not in the USA, as such, an English-Hebrew 
bilingual may be disadvantaged relative to an English monolingual in English fluency 
because of increased attempts to retrieve words like camel that are relatively difficult to 
retrieve in English. In fact, there is evidence that bilinguals produce significantly lower-
frequency words on average in their semantic fluency responses relative to monolinguals 
(Sandoval et al., in press), a most surprising result given bilinguals’ relative difficulty with 
retrieving low-frequency words (Gollan et al., 2008; Ivanova & Costa, 2008).  

Here we further pursue the possibility of a bilingual effect on semantic processing by 
comparing bilinguals and monolinguals on a semantic association task. Word association 
responses have played “a central role in theories of language and concept processing” (De 
Deyne, & Storms, 2008, pp. 213). If bilingualism changes the nature of semantic 
representations, then bilinguals might be expected to produce different responses than 
monolinguals in the association task. Conversely, if semantic representations are largely 
unaffected by the presence of different languages in a bilingual, then bilinguals should 
perform much like monolinguals in semantic association tests, particularly when bilinguals 
are tested in their relatively dominant language which is richly and automatically connected 
with conceptual representations (Kroll & Tokowicz, 2005). Early studies of word-association 
responses in bilingual speakers found partial convergence of responses produced in each 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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language (by the same person) implying that the two languages of a bilingual tap partially 
shared semantic representations (Kolers, 1963). More recent studies confirm this conclusion, 
and extend it to propose that between-language overlap at the semantic level is greater for 
concrete words, nouns, and cognates (e.g., translation equivalents that overlap in meaning 
and form such as name and the Spanish equivalent nombre; van Hell & de Groot, 1998).  

In Experiment 1, we investigated if bilinguals and monolinguals produce different 
responses in the semantic association task. A finding of significant differences between 
groups would be consistent with the proposal that knowledge of two languages alters the 
nature of lexical-semantic representations. An alternative possibility that is explored in 
Experiments 2 and 3 is that difficulty with lexical access may also play a role in the nature of 
bilingual responses in the association task. 

Experiment 1 

In experiment 1, we assessed whether bilinguals produce different associations than 
monolinguals in the semantic association task. In previous work (Gollan, Salmon, & Paxton, 
2006) we suggested that more elaborate semantic processing takes place when speakers are 
asked to produce responses to “strong cues” which are associated with relatively few 
different responses, and very strongly with one response in particular. For example, given the 
strong cue flipper, the overwhelming majority (i.e., 80%) of speakers say dolphin (Nelson, 
McEvoy & Schreiber, 1998). In contrast, relatively “weak cues” are weakly associated with a 
large number of different responses and may initiate relatively less semantic processing. For 
example, given the weak cue chicken the most common associate (i.e., soup) was produced 
by only 9% of speakers along with 28 other weakly associated responses (fried, wings, food, 
leg, bird, nuggets, turkey, eggs, fat, hen, rooster, eat, feather, little, meat, sandwich, afraid, 
baked, barbecue, bone, breast, cutlet, dinner, dumplings, grease, neck, potpie, scared; Nelson 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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et al., 1998). In Experiment 1 we compared bilinguals and monolinguals in their English 
association responses on the association task with a manipulation of cue strength as a further 
index of the possible processing locus for any observed differences between groups. Cues 
were selected from a normative database of monolingual association responses and 
participants’ responses were coded for typicality using these referenced norms as a point of 
comparison. Because the norms were created by testing monolinguals, a semantic-locus 
model predicts that bilinguals’ responses should resemble responses in the norms relatively 
less than monolinguals’ responses; in contrast, if there are no differences between bilinguals 
and monolinguals at the locus of semantic processing then no differences should be found in 
response typicality between groups. 

Method 

Participants 
Thirty-one monolingual English speakers and 37 Spanish-English bilinguals who were 

undergraduates at UCSD participated in Experiment 1 for course credit. Bilingual participants 
were early bilinguals who learned Spanish first at home, and then English at school or 
preschool. The majority of Spanish-English bilinguals at UCSD report English-dominance 
and also appear to be English dominant when tested in both languages (e.g., they name 
pictures more quickly in English than in Spanish; Gollan et al., 2008, and when given the 
choice of using Spanish or English to name pictures, they use Spanish about 25% of the time; 
Gollan & Ferreira, 2009). A sizeable minority of bilinguals in this cohort are relatively 
balanced bilinguals, and only a very small minority is Spanish-dominant. In particular, 9 out 
of the 37 bilingual participants in Experiment 1 reported being slightly more proficient in 
Spanish than English (but note that some bilinguals who report slight Spanish-dominance in 
this cohort name pictures equally quickly in English and Spanish). Approximately half of the 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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monolinguals had some limited exposure to a second language primarily through classroom 
instruction but none reported an extended immersion experience in a language other than 
English. A summary of participants’ characteristics can be found in Table 1. 

 
------------------------------- 

Table 1: Mean and SD in parentheses participants’ characteristics.  
 

 EXPERIMENT 1 EXPERIMENT 2 EXPERIMENT 3  

 
 Monolingual Bilingual  Monolingual Bilingual Monolingual Bilingual 

 
Age (years) 21.2 (4.0) 20.2 (1.4) 21.0 (3.7) 20.6 (4.6)  20.4 (1.6) 19.7 (1.3) 

 
Years of education 14.5 (1.6)  14.2 (1.3) 14.6 (1.5)  14.0 (1.6)  14.1 (1.0) 13.4 (1.0) 

 
Gender (Male %) 25.8 % 33.3 % 36.2 % 27.9 %  32.6 % 14.6 % 

 
Age Eng. exposure N/A 4.8 (2.8) N/A 2.7 (2.2)  N/A 4.3 (3.5) 

 
Age regular use Eng. N/A 6.2 (3.6) N/A 4.3 (2.0)  N/A 6.0 (4.3) 

 
Self-rateda ability 
to speak English 7.0 (0.2) 6.2 (0.9) 7.0 (0.1) 6.6 (0.7)  7.0 (0.0) 6.4 (0.8) 

 
Self-rateda ability  
to speak other lang. 2.6 (1.0) 6.1 (1.2) 2.6 (1.1) 5.7 (1.2)  2.9 (1.1) 5.9 (1.1) 

 
a Proficiency level based on self-ratings using a scale of 1-7 with 1 being “little to no 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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knowledge” and 7 being “like a native speaker.”  
------------------------------- 

 
Materials 

Forty cues were selected from the Nelson et al. (1998) association normative database. 
Further details about this database are available at: 
http://cyber.acomp.usf.edu/FreeAssociation/Intro.html. The cues varied in association 
strength (FSG, forward strength, or strength of association of the cue to the target) of their 
most common associates, which reflects the proportion of participants who produced a 
particular associate when given the cue word. Of the 40 cues, 20 were “strong cues” having 
one very common associate (FSG ≥ 0.5 M = 0.71, SD = 0.13) and 20 were “weak cues” 
having many associates (each produced less often) according to Nelson et al.'s (1998) 
database (FSG < 0.1, M = 0.09, SD = 0.03). See Appendix A for a list of the materials. 
Procedure  

Participants were tested individually in a quiet room. The stimulus cues were presented 
one by one verbally in a fixed random order by an experimenter. Participants had previously 
been instructed to say whatever came to mind after hearing the stimulus cue. Whenever 
participants did not respond to a cue, the experimenter prompted them again. Participants 
were encouraged to respond with one word and not to repeat answers. The experimenter 
wrote down each response after it was uttered. The sessions were also audio-taped for 
subsequent verification. 

Results and Discussion 

Response typicality was coded by reference to the association norms provided by Nelson 
et al. (1998). Responses that appeared in the norms were assigned a typicality-strength score 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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based on the proportion of speakers who produced that response (i.e., the variable FSG or 
forward strength). Responses that were not listed in the norms were excluded from analysis 
but see Table 2 which shows the percentages of excluded responses in Table 2. Note that 
bilinguals produced significantly more responses that were not listed in the norms than 
monolinguals in the strong cue condition (F (1, 66) = 10.64, MSE = 0.018, ηp2 = 0.14, p < 
.01), but there was only a trend in the direction of a bilingual-monolingual difference in the 
weak cue condition (F (1, 66) = 2.89, MSE = 0.016, ηp2 = 0.04, p = .09) in which over 50% of 
the responses produced by both participant groups were not listed in the norms. The reason to 
exclude these responses was to avoid making assumptions as to what typicality values to 
assign to them. Furthermore, excluding them was the most conservative option given the 
pattern of excluded responses found in the different conditions.  
 Response association strengths were submitted to a 2 x 2 ANOVA with speaker group 
(bilingual and monolingual) and cue type (strong and weak) as non-repeated and repeated 
factors respectively. (Item trends can be found in Appendix A, which lists differences 
between speaker groups for each individual item.) 
 The results of this series of tests showed that bilinguals’ overall response typicality did not 
differ significantly from that of monolinguals (F (1, 66) = 2.36, MSE = 0.003, ηp2 = 0.04, p = 
0.13), and that all speakers produced more common associates when given strong cues than 
when given weak cues (see Table 2; F (1, 66) = 3435.55, MSE = 0.003, ηp2 = 0.98, p < 0.01).  
However, strong cues produced a larger difference between bilinguals and monolinguals; the 
interaction between participant type and cue type was just significant (F (1, 66) = 3.86, MSE 
= 0.003, ηp2 = 0.06, p = 0.05). Planned contrasts revealed a marginally significant difference 
between bilinguals and monolinguals both for weak cues (F (1, 66) = 2.97, MSE = 0.000, ηp2 
= 0.04, p = 0.08) and for strong cues (F (1, 66) = 3.12, MSE = 0.005, ηp2 = 0.05, p = 0.08). 
However, whereas strong cues produced and effect in the predicted direction (with bilinguals 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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producing less typical responses than monolinguals), weak cues tended in the opposite 
direction.  

------------------------------- 
Table 2: Mean response typicality (association strength) of responses given by bilinguals and 
monolinguals to strong and weak cues in Experiment 1, and rate of production of responses 
not found in the norms. Standard deviations in parentheses. 

 Speaker Group Strong Cues Weak Cues 

Response 
Typicality 

Monolinguals 0.58 (0.07) 0.03 (0.01) 
Bilinguals 0.55 (0.07) 0.04 (0.01) 

Rate of Responses 
Not in Norms 

Monolinguals 0.18 (0.11) 0.51 (0.15) 
Bilinguals 0.28 (0.15) 0.56 (0.11) 

 
------------------------------- 

 
The results of Experiment 1 suggest that bilingualism leads speakers to produce 

significantly different association responses from monolinguals. In particular, when given 
strong cues, bilinguals were significantly more likely to produce responses that were not 
listed in the norms. Even when considering only responses speakers produced that were listed 
in the norms, bilinguals exhibited a trend towards producing less-typical responses on 
average than monolinguals for strong cues, but not when given weak cues.  Importantly, the 
measure of response typicality that we used (association strength or FSG from the Nelson et 
al., 1998, norms) is based on monolinguals preferences. As such, the classification of 
bilinguals’ responses as being “atypical” cannot be taken literally and the label “different” is 
more appropriate. All this difference on its own tells us is that bilinguals' semantic network 
may be different from that of monolinguals—a claim that potentially has important 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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implications for understanding the nature of semantic representations. The interesting 
question is how and why does the difference between groups arise? Monolinguals differ from 
bilinguals not just in the number of languages they speak, but also on other dimensions that 
may affect the sort of semantic representations formed and the associations established 
between them. What is more, bilinguals differ from monolinguals in several linguistic 
measures that could influence their performance in the association task even if the task itself 
can be considered highly semantic in nature (de Groot, 1989). In this sense, lower association 
strength in bilinguals’ responses does not imply that bilinguals’ semantic representations are 
“deviant” with respect to monolinguals, or even that semantic associations are weaker for 
bilinguals.  
 Our finding that the bilingual effect was stronger for cues with strong associates than for 
cues weak associates provides some clues about the locus of the difference between speaker 
groups. If association to strong cues is a more sensitive measure of the nature of semantic 
processing (Gollan et al., 2006), then this result could be taken to suggest that bilinguals and 
monolinguals largely establish a similar semantic network, and that only elaborate semantic 
processing reveals what amounts to very small differences between groups. This 
interpretation would, in any event, offer some support for the proposal that bilingualism 
influences the nature of lexical-semantic representations. Because bilinguals completed the 
association task exclusively in English, this analysis would further imply an influence of their 
knowledge of Spanish on association responses in English.  
 However, weak associates may simply be less sensitive to between-group differences 
because of floor effects. Without a manipulation of non-semantic factors there is little 
possibility of identifying the locus of the bilingual effect on association responses. What is 
needed is to ask whether non-semantic variables influence bilinguals’ responses in the 
association task. It has been suggested that the association task primarily reflects semantic 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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processing, and is not influenced by lexical accessibility. Supporting this claim, imageability, 
but not word-frequency, was a powerful predictor of association responses (de Groot, 1989; 
see also Nelson, Dyrdal & Goodmon, 2005); speakers were faster to produce associations to 
highly imageable cues than to low-imageability cues, but differences in cue frequency had 
negligible effects (if anything, speakers produced associations to high-frequency cues more 
slowly than to low-frequency cue words).  
 Because word-frequency is known to affect lexical retrieval (for a recent review, see 
Kittredge, Dell, Verkuilen, & Schwartz, 2008), the absence of a frequency effect on 
association responses implies that the association task primarily reflects semantic processing, 
and remains relatively unaffected by lexical accessibility. However, null effects are always 
difficult to interpret. It is possible that the association task is affected by lexical accessibility 
of the strongest associate, but that this could not be detected in previous studies that focused 
only on cue frequency (de Groot, 1989). On this view, bilinguals’ responses in semantic 
association should differ from those of monolinguals’ only when bilinguals have difficulty 
retrieving the lexical labels of the associates that come to mind. In Experiment 2 we test 
whether factors that facilitate retrieval for bilinguals attenuate (or even eliminate) the 
bilingual effect on association responses.  

Experiment 2 

Although knowledge of two languages makes lexical access more difficult in some 
language tasks, it is possible to reduce or eliminate these bilingual disadvantages by 
manipulating the nature of the materials. For example, bilinguals access translation 
equivalents that are formally similar in their two languages, or cognates (e.g., artery is arteria 
in Spanish), more easily than words that have dissimilar translation equivalents, or 
noncognates (e.g., dustpan is recogedor in Spanish). In some cases manipulation of cognate 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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status eliminates the bilingual disadvantage in lexical access (Gollan & Acenas, 2004). 
Numerous studies document these “cognate facilitation effects,” even when bilinguals are 
tested exclusively in their relatively more dominant language.  

The observation of cognate effects in the dominant language is important in the current 
context because it indicates that the less dominant language can influence the dominant 
language, and – for the majority of bilinguals in Experiment 1 – it was the dominant language 
which revealed a bilingual effect. Cognate effects in the dominant language have been 
reported both in recognition (e.g., van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002), and production in both young 
(Costa, Caramazza, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2000), and aging bilinguals (Gollan, Fennema-
Notestine, Montoya, & Jernigan, 2007). In the present context, if cognates reduce the 
difference between bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ association responses this would increase 
confidence that knowledge of two languages influences the nature of association responses, 
and would help identify the locus of the differences between groups.  
 Another variable that increases lexical accessibility is word frequency, and there is 
evidence that frequency especially affects lexical accessibility in bilingual language 
production. Two recent studies (Gollan et al., 2008; Ivanova & Costa, 2008) demonstrated 
that slowing related to bilingualism in the picture naming task was greater for naming 
pictures with low-frequency names (e.g., frog) than pictures with high-frequency names (e.g., 
dog). Stated differently, when bilinguals named pictures (in their dominant language) they 
demonstrated a larger frequency effect than monolinguals. Although there is some debate 
about the locus of word-frequency effects in language production (e.g., Alario, Costa, & 
Caramazza, 2002; Dell, 1990; Griffin & Bock, 1998; Jescheniak & Levelt, 1994; Kittredge, et 
al., 2008; Santesteban, Costa, Pontin, & Navarrete, 2006), there is a consensus that frequency 
effects arise during lexical selection, and specifically not during pre-lexical semantic 
processing (for a recent review see Almeida, Knobel, Finkbeiner, & Caramazza, 2007). As 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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such, the modulation of the bilingual disadvantage in picture naming by frequency implies an 
influence of bilingualism on lexical accessibility. In a similar vein, if the bilingual effect on 
semantic association is modulated by associate-frequency this would localize the effect at a 
non-semantic lexical-retrieval locus, and more broadly would also imply that the association 
task does not exclusively reflect semantic processing.  
 In Experiment 2, we again compared bilinguals and monolinguals, exclusively examining 
cues with strong associates with four types of cue-associate pairings. At the two extremes we 
had (a) cognate-cognate pairs (in which both the cue and its most common associate are 
Spanish-English cognates), and (b) noncognate-noncognate pairs (in which both the cue and 
its most common associate are noncognates), and we also included (c) cognate-noncognate 
and (d) noncognate-cognate pairs. Assuming that cognate status could facilitate cue and 
associate retrieval, bilinguals’ responses would be predicted to most resemble those of 
monolinguals for pairs in which both cue and most-common associate are cognates (Cog-Cog 
cue-target pairs). Conversely, bilinguals’ responses should differ most from those of 
monolinguals for noncognate cues with a most common associate that is also a noncognate 
(i.e., Noncog-Noncog cue-target pairs). 
 Within each condition we also included a range of word-frequency of the most common 
associate (while controlling frequency between conditions). Although prior work has 
identified the association task to be relatively insensitive to word frequency effects (both in 
frequency of the cue; de Groot, 1989; and in frequency of the associated words; Nelson et al., 
2005), we hypothesized that bilinguals’ performance in the association task may nevertheless 
reveal a role for frequency of the associate because of bilinguals’ greater sensitivity to 
frequency in production tasks (Gollan et al., 2008; Ivanova & Costa, 2008).  
 If the differences we observed between mono- and bilinguals in the semantic association 
task in Experiment 1 were caused by bilinguals’ difficulty in accessing the names of common 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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associates, then we should find a smaller effect of bilingualism on the association task when 
the most common associate is a high-frequency word, and a larger difference between 
bilinguals and monolinguals when the most common associate is a low-frequency word. 
Conversely, if the bilingual effect on the semantic association task arises exclusively at the 
level of semantic processing, then there should be no modulation of the bilingual effect by 
frequency (i.e., bilinguals should produce less typical associates from monolinguals even 
when cues have common associates that are high-frequency words, and to an equal extent for 
cues with high- versus low-frequency associates).  

Method 

Participants 
Seventy-one monolingual English speakers and 68 Spanish-English bilinguals selected 

from the same population as in Experiment 1 participated in Experiment 2. Three speakers 
had to be excluded from the analyses: two monolinguals because of technical problems 
during the testing, and one bilingual because he was trilingual (also spoke Chinese from an 
early age). As reported above, most bilinguals in the cohort our participants come from are 
relatively balanced or English-dominant bilinguals. In particular, in Experiment 2, only 3 
participants reported being dominant in Spanish. A summary of the participants’ 
characteristics can be found in Table 1. 
Materials  

A list of 72 cues was selected based on the normative database published by Nelson et al. 
(1998). Of these, 36 were cognates and 36 were noncognates. Each of these types was further 
divided in two, with half of the cues being strongly associated to a cognate and half to a 
noncognate resulting in four conditions (Cog-Cog, Cog-Noncog, Noncog-Cog, Noncog-



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

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Noncog). The four conditions were matched for association strength according to the Nelson 
et al.'s (1998) norms, as well as mean frequency of cue and target (all p's > 0.17).  

It was not possible to find enough materials to create a full factorial manipulation of 
cognate status and word-frequency count of most common associate (high, low). However, to 
enable us to consider the possible effects of associate frequency on the bilingual effect on 
semantic association, within each of the four conditions, we attempted to include associates 
with a range of frequencies such that approximately half (as close as possible given the other 
restrictions) of the most common associates were high frequency, and half were low 
frequency, with a cut-off of 70 counts per million (CELEX; Baayen, Piepenbrock, & 
Gulikers, 1995). Appendix B contains the list of cues, their most common semantic 
associates, their Spanish translations, the frequency count of the associate, and the frequency 
level for purposes of analysis.  

All cues were presented to each participant in one of four different randomized orders, 
with roughly equal numbers of participants tested in each list. 
Procedure 

The procedure was the same as in Experiment 1, except that speakers were allowed to 
repeat words if they chose to because a few of the most common associates were the same for 
different target cues (see Appendix B).  

Results and Discussion  

 In all four conditions, bilinguals produced significantly more responses that were not in 
the norms than monolinguals (all ps ≤ .04). The rate of these responses is listed in Table 3, 
and as in Experiment 1 we excluded these responses from further analyses. 

Cognate Effects. Response typicality was coded by reference to the association norms 
provided by Nelson et al. (1998) as in Experiment 1. In addition, in Experiment 2 responses 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

19

were also coded with respect to whether they were the most common associate listed in the 
Nelson norms or not. Table 3 shows the mean association strength (from the Nelson norms) 
of the responses produced in each condition for the two speaker groups. Supporting the 
predictions outlined above, the greatest difference between bilinguals and monolinguals in 
mean association strength (i.e., mean response typicality) was obtained in the Noncog-
Noncog condition and the difference was comparatively much smaller (and no longer 
significant; see below) in the Cog-Cog condition. 

Response association strengths were submitted to a 2 x 4 ANOVA with participant type 
(monolingual and bilingual) as a between subjects factor and condition as a repeated 
measures factor. (Item trends can be found in Appendix B, which lists differences between 
speaker groups for each individual item.) Results showed that bilinguals produced less typical 
associates overall compared to monolinguals (F (1, 135) = 10.80, MSE = 0.004, ηp2 = 0.07, p 
< 0.01). There were significant differences between conditions (F (3, 405) = 11.99, MSE = 
0.003, ηp2 = 0.08, p < 0.01), but this difference did not seem to be modulated by bilingual 
status (the expected interaction between cognateness and speaker group was not significant; 
(F (3, 405) = 1.73, MSE = 0.003, ηp2 = 0.01, p = 0.16)). 

Given the lack of significant interaction when the four conditions were considered, we 
decided to focus our analyses on the two extreme conditions, i.e., cue-associate pairs that 
were both cognates (Cog-Cog) and those that were both noncognates (Noncog-Noncog). 
Planned comparisons revealed no significant difference between bilinguals and monolinguals 
for Cog-Cog items (F (1, 135) = 1.07, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.01, p = 0.30), a significant 
difference between bilinguals and monolinguals for Noncog-Noncog items (F (1, 135) = 
13.99, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.09, p < 0.01), and a significant interaction between condition and 
speaker group (F (1, 135) = 4.13, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.03, p = 0.04). This analysis confirmed 
that the bilingual effect on semantic association is largest when bilinguals were asked to 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

20

respond to noncognate cues whose most common associate is also a noncognate, and smallest 
(and not significantly different) when bilinguals responded to cognate cues whose most 
common associate is also a cognate. 

Additionally, we considered the possibility that the cognate effect may depend on whether 
it is the cue or the associate that is a cognate. That is, there may be differences in the effect of 
cognateness during comprehension (cue cognateness) and production (associate cognateness). 
While an effect of the cognate status of the cue would be more likely to reflect underlying 
differences in the semantic networks of bilinguals with respect to those of monolinguals, an 
effect of the cognate status of the associate would be more likely to be due to the relative ease 
of production of cognates versus noncognates for bilinguals. A 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVA with cue 
and associate cognateness as within subjects variables and speaker group as a between 
subjects variable showed the cognate status of cue was not significant (p = 0.31), but a 
significant effect of cognate status of the associate (p < .01). However, the interactions 
between cue or associate cognate status and speaker group failed to reach significance (ps = 
0.17 and 0.15 respectively). Thus, these results confirm our conclusion that the cognate effect 
is not due to cognateness playing a role either primarily during comprehension or during 
production, but rather to a combination of the cognateness of the two words in the association 
pair facilitating responses for bilinguals. 

Having found no difference in response typicality between speaker groups for Cog-Cog 
pairs, we conducted a secondary analysis to consider more precisely how cognate status 
influenced bilinguals’ association responses. Specifically, we asked whether the cognate 
effects we observed were caused by an increased likelihood that bilinguals would produce the 
most common associate for Cog-Cog than for Noncog-Noncog pairs. For these analyses we 
divided participants’ responses into two categories—those where the most common associate 
had been produced, and those where an alternative associate had been produced (according to 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

21

the Nelson et al., 1998, norms). The means are shown in Table 3. As expected, bilinguals 
were more likely to produce the strongest associate in the Cog-Cog than in the Noncog-
Noncog condition (F (1, 67) = 20.86, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.24, p < 0.01) However, although 
we matched materials across conditions for forward association strength, this was also true 
for monolinguals (F (1, 68) = 6.75, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.09, p < 0.05), implying that 
something other than cognate status differs between conditions. More importantly, the 
interaction indicating that bilinguals may have benefitted more from cognate status than 
monolinguals trended in the right direction but was not significant (F (1, 135) = 2.26, MSE = 
0.01, ηp2 = 0.02, p = 0.14). In addition, bilinguals were still significantly less likely than 
monolinguals to produce the most common associate in the Cog-Cog condition (and more 
generally, in all four conditions all p's < 0.03). These analyses imply that more than one 
factor led bilinguals to produce similarly typical responses overall relative to monolinguals 
on the Cog-Cog pairsi. 

 
------------------------------- 

Table 3: Mean response typicality (association strength), rate of production of responses not 
found in the norms, and probability of producing the most common associate (and standard 
deviation in parentheses) with respect to cognate status in Experiment 2.  

Condition 
Speaker 
Group 

Cog- 
Coga 

Cog- 
Noncoga 

Noncog- 
Cog 

Noncog-
Noncog 

Response 
Typicality 

Monolinguals 0.38 (0.07) 0.36 (0.05) 0.39 (0.06) 0.37 (0.05) 
Bilinguals 0.37 (0.06) 0.34 (0.06) 0.38 (0.06) 0.34 (0.06) 

Rate of Responses 
Not in Norms 

Monolinguals 0.19 (0.10) 0.17 (0.11) 0.21 (0.14) 0.17 (0.11) 
Bilinguals 0.23 (0.12) 0.23 (0.13) 0.29 (0.13) 0.22 (0.12) 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

22

Prob. Strongest 
Associateb 

Monolinguals 0.49 (0.12) 0.43 (0.12) 0.45 (0.13) 0.44 (0.12) 
Bilinguals 0.44 (0.13) 0.38 (0.13) 0.39 (0.12) 0.36 (0.14) 

 
a Cog = cognate; noncog = noncognate  
b Prob. Strongest Associate = probability of producing the strongest or most common 

associate  
------------------------------- 

 
Because bilinguals sometimes perform more similarly in their two languages if the targets 

are concrete, there was some concern that concreteness might be driving these effects. We 
found a significant difference between conditions with respect to cue concreteness  and 
associate concreteness (both ps < .05). However in both cases cognate cues were more 
abstract than noncognate cues, resulting in bilinguals behaving more like monolinguals when 
both cue and target were more abstract. Since the differences between conditions for the two 
speaker groups would run counter to expectations if the relevant factor was concreteness, it is 
more likely that the effect is rather due to the cognateness manipulation. 

Frequency Effects. Turning to the possible role of associate frequency on bilinguals’ 
responses we first considered whether the frequency of the most common associate affected 
response typicality. Table 4 shows response typicality for the two speaker groups by 
frequency level. A 2 x 2 ANOVA comparing frequency level (high versus low frequency 
associate) as a repeated measures factor and speaker group (bilinguals versus monolinguals) 
as a between subjects with response FSGs as the dependent variable again revealed that 
bilinguals produced significantly different responses than monolinguals (F (1, 135) = 11.95, 
MSE = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.08, p < 0.01). There was no overall effect of associate frequency (F (1, 
135) = 1.93, MSE = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.01, p = 0.17), but this finding was qualified by a 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

23

significant interaction between associate frequency and speaker group (F (1, 135) = 4.90, 
MSE = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.04, p < 0.05) which revealed that the bilingual effect on association 
responses was more pronounced for cues with low-frequency associates. Planned 
comparisons showed that bilinguals differed from monolinguals when the associate had a 
low-frequency count (F (1, 135) = 13.27, MSE = 0.003, ηp2 = 0.09, p < 0.01), but not when 
the associate was a high-frequency word (F (1, 135) = 1.65, MSE = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.01, p = 
0.20). In addition, as reported by Nelson et al. (2005), monolinguals did not seem to show 
any effect of associate frequency at all (F < 1). However, bilinguals exhibited a robust 
frequency effect on response typicality (F (1, 67) = 6.02, MSE = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.08, p < 0.05). 

 
------------------------------- 

Table 4: Mean response typicality (association strength) and probability of producing the 
most common associate (and standard deviation in parentheses) with respect to frequency 
level in Experiment 2.  

Condition Speaker group 
High Frequencya 

Associate 
Low Frequencya 

Associate 

Response Typicality 
Monolinguals 0.37 (0.04) 0.38 (0.05) 

Bilinguals 0.37 (0.04) 0.35 (0.06) 
Probability of producing 

strongest associate 
Monolinguals 0.45 (0.12) 0.45 (0.10) 

Bilinguals 0.43 (0.11) 0.35 (0.12) 
 
a High frequency = (>70 counts per million); Low frequency = (< 70 counts per million)  

------------------------------- 
 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

24

As above, we also considered how associate frequency influenced bilinguals’ responses by 
asking if high associate frequency increased the chance that bilinguals would produce the 
most common associate. Table 4 shows the probability of responding with the most common 
associate for the two speaker groups according to frequency level. A 2 x 2 ANOVA 
contrasting frequency level (high versus low frequency associate) as a repeated measures 
factor and speaker group (bilinguals versus monolinguals) as a between subjects factor 
showed that overall speakers were more likely to produce the most common associate for 
cues that had a high-frequency associate than for cues that had a low-frequency associate (F 
(1, 135) = 10.85, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.07, p < 0.01). In addition, bilinguals were less likely to 
produce the most common associate than monolinguals (F (1, 135) = 18.86, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 
= 0.12, p < 0.01). However, both main effects were qualified by a significant interaction 
between associate frequency and speaker group (F (1, 135) = 10.91, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.08, 
p < 0.01). Planned comparisons revealed that bilinguals were less likely than monolinguals to 
produce the most common associate only when the associate had a low-frequency count (F 
(1, 135) = 30.01, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.18, p < 0.01), but this effect of speaker group was no 
longer significant for cues when the associate was a high-frequency word (F (1, 135) = 1.44, 
MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.01, p = 0.23). In addition, monolinguals did not show any effect of 
frequency (F < 1), while bilinguals exhibited a robust frequency effect on the probability of 
producing the most common associate (F (1, 67) = 23.88, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.26, p < 0.01). 
These analyses imply that the difference in performance between mono- and bilinguals with 
respect to response typicality is due to a frequency effect, to which only bilinguals are 
susceptible, on the probability of producing the most common associate.  

Independence of Cognate and Frequency Effects. Having observed robust frequency 
effects and some evidence of cognate effects on association responses in bilinguals, a 
remaining question concerned the extent to which these effects are independent of each other. 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

25

Importantly, we controlled for frequency across conditions, therefore, the cognate effects we 
obtained could not be attributed exclusively to associate frequency, and vice-versa. However, 
given that we were not able to find sufficient materials for a full factorial manipulation of 
cognateness and frequency, it remained possible that part of the frequency effect we observed 
was due to cognate status. To check whether this may be the case, we reclassified conditions 
according to whether the associate was or not a cognate and ran a 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVA on 
probability of producing the most common associate with speaker group as non-repeated 
factor and cognate status of the associate and frequency as repeated factors. The interaction 
between cognateness and frequency reflecting a higher probability of producing the most 
common associate when this associate was both a high frequency word and a cognate was 
marginally significant (p = 0.06), while the three-way interaction between speaker group, 
cognateness and frequency was significant at the 0.03 level. The interaction between 
associate cognateness and frequency, furthermore, proved to be significant only for bilinguals 
(p < 0.01), but not for monolinguals (p = 0.85). It seems, therefore, that word frequency of 
the most common associate and cognate status play independent roles in modulating the 
bilingual effect on semantic association responses.  

Although the finding of a cognate effect on association responses is likely to reflect the 
relatively greater lexical accessibility of cognates for bilinguals, it has also been argued (e.g., 
van Hell & de Groot, 1998) that cognate effects could arise at a semantic processing level. On 
this view, translation equivalents overlap to a greater extent at a semantic level when they are 
formally similar between languages. In contrast, as reviewed above, there is general 
agreement that frequency effects arise at a post-semantic locus. Thus, to increase our 
confidence in the conclusion that bilinguals produce different associations at least in part 
because of difficulty with retrieving certain associates, we conducted another experiment 
focusing exclusively on frequency of the associate.  



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

26

Experiment 3 

As an additional test of our hypothesis that bilinguals’ difficulty with lexical access during 
language production influences the nature of their responses in the word-association task, we 
conducted a third experiment with a more powerful word-frequency manipulation and also 
controlling for number of translations and concreteness (Tokowicz & Kroll, 2007), and other 
variables that could influence the nature of bilinguals’ responses.   

Method 

Participants 
Forty-six monolingual English speakers and forty-eight Spanish-English bilinguals 

selected from the same population as in Experiments 1 and 2 participated in this third 
experiment. Most bilingual participants reported similar proficiency in Spanish and English. 
Of the 48, 10 reported being slightly more proficient in Spanish. A summary of the 
participants’ characteristics can be found in Table 1. 
Materials  

Stimuli consisted of 31 cues for which the strongest associate was a low frequency item 
(<70 counts per million; CELEX; Baayen et al., 1995), and 31 cues for which the strongest 
associate was a high frequency lexical item (>70 counts per million). Table 5 shows the 
materials characteristics. Across the manipulation of associate-frequency the materials were 
matched for associate typicality (forward association strength; FSG), associate number of 
translations into Spanish, associate concreteness (QCON), associate length in syllables, cue 
frequency, cue number of translations into Spanish, cue concreteness (QCON), and cue 
length in syllables. Number of translations was determined by asking five native Spanish-
English bilinguals (who did not participate in the current experiments) to translate the cues 
and their associates from English to Spanish. Morphological variants were not counted as 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

27

separate translations (e.g., banquero/banquera). In addition, we matched the cue-associate 
pairs in the high and low-frequency conditions for the extent to which the relationship 
between them is strictly associative versus more purely semantic. Associative versus 
semantic relationship was assessed with subjective ratings from 5 people with knowledge of 
psycholinguistics (either a PhD or graduate level work) of the extent to which pairs were 
related associatively, semantically, or both. On average the pairs tended to be both lexically 
and semantically associated but there was a fair amount of variability in these ratings in both 
frequency groups (see Table 5; but note that recent conceptualizations of meaning 
representation frame the distinction between associative and semantic relationships as 
arbitrary; Hare, Jones, Thomson, Kelly, & McRae, 2009).   

 
------------------------------- 

Table 5. Characteristics of cue-associate pairs in Experiment 3. 

 
High-Frequency 

Associate Condition 
Low-Frequency 

Associate Condition   
 M SD M SD t p 
forward association strength (FSGa) 0.58 0.12 0.59 0.12 < 1 0.84 
associate frequency 227.55 258.00 21.55 19.03 11.55 < .01 
associate number of translations 1.68 0.70 1.71 0.97 < 1 0.88 
associate concreteness (QCONa,b) 5.50 0.90 5.52 0.89 < 1 0.93 
associate length in syllables 1.35 0.55 1.35 0.55 < 1 1.00 
cue frequency 27.49 43.05 27.10 42.99 < 1 0.97 
cue number of translations 1.58 0.76 1.45 0.81 < 1 0.52 
cue concreteness (QCONa,c) 5.43 1.04 5.31 1.03 < 1 0.69 
cue length in syllables 1.45 0.51 1.42 0.50 < 1 0.8 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

28

associative versus semantic d -0.25 3.70 -0.29 4.03 < 1 0.97 
       

aResponse typicality of strongest associate taken from Nelson et al., 1989 norms 
bValues available in Nelson et al., 1989 norms for 30/31 associates in both High- and Low-
Frequency conditions 
cValues available in Nelson et al., 1989 norms for 27/31 cues in high- and 25/31 cues in low-
frequency condition 
d Based on ratings with a scale in which -7 = occur together but do not overlap in meaning; 0 
= occur together and overlap in meaning, 7 = overlap in meaning but do not occur together. 

------------------------------- 
 
Appendix C contains the list of cues, their most common semantic associates, their 

Spanish translations, and the frequency count of cue and associate. All cues were presented to 
each participant in one of four different randomized orders, with roughly equal numbers of 
participants tested in each list. 
Procedure 

The procedure was the same as in Experiment 2.  

Results and Discussion  

 As in Experiment 2, bilinguals were significantly more likely than monolinguals to 
produce responses not listed in the Nelson norms in both high and low frequency associate 
conditions (both ps < .01). The rates of these responses by speaker group and conditions are 
shown in Table 6, and, as in Experiments 1 and 2, we excluded these responses from further 
analysis. 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

29

A 2 x 2 ANOVA contrasting frequency level (high versus low frequency associate) as a 
repeated measures factor and speaker group (bilinguals versus monolinguals) as a between 
subjects factor with typicality (or association strength) of responses as the dependent variable 
revealed that bilinguals produced less typical responses overall in comparison with 
monolinguals (see Table 6); this main effect of speaker group was highly robust (F (1, 94) = 
12.95, MSE = 0.005, ηp2 = 0.12, p < 0.01). In addition, cues with high frequency associates 
elicited more typical responses than cues with low frequency associates (F (1, 94) = 17.98, 
MSE = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.16, p < 0.01). However, both main effects were qualified by a 
significant interaction between participant type and associate-frequency (F (1, 94) = 8.13, 
MSE = 0.002, ηp2 = 0.08, p < 0.01) reflecting the fact that bilinguals were more sensitive than 
monolinguals to the frequency manipulation. Planned comparisons showed a frequency effect 
on bilinguals’ response typicality (F (1, 47) = 18.45, MSE = 0.003, ηp2 = 0.28, p < 0.01) but 
not in monolinguals’ response typicality (F (1, 47) = 1.52, MSE = 0.001, ηp2 = 0.03, p = 
0.23). Furthermore, the difference between monolinguals and bilinguals was significant for 
cues with low frequency associates (F (1, 94) = 16.60, MSE = 0.004, ηp2 = 0.15, p < 0.01), 
but was no longer significant for cues with high frequency associates (F (1, 94) = 2.55, MSE 
= 0.002, ηp2 = 0.03, p = 0.11). 

As in Experiment 2, we also considered whether the frequency of the most typical 
associate affected the probability that bilinguals would in fact produce that associate in a 2 x 
2 ANOVA with frequency level (high versus low frequency associate) as a repeated measures 
factor and speaker group (bilinguals versus monolinguals) as a between subjects factor and 
probability of producing the strongest associate as the dependent variable (see Table 6). As in 
Experiment 2, speakers produced the strongest associate more often when it was a high-
frequency word than when it was a low frequency word (F (1, 94) = 20.24, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 
0.18, p < 0.01), monolinguals were more likely than bilinguals to produce the most common 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

30

associate (F (1, 94) = 20.66, MSE = 0.02, ηp2 = 0.18, p < 0.01), and bilinguals were more 
affected by the frequency manipulation than monolinguals (F (1, 94) = 5.82, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 
= 0.06, p < 0.05). As reported for response typicality, the effect of frequency on probability 
of producing the strongest associate was significant for bilinguals (F (1, 47) = 19.56, MSE = 
0.01, ηp2 = 0.29, p < 0.01) but did not reach significance for monolinguals (F (1, 47) = 2.79, 
MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.06, p = 0.10). However, in contrast with the results for response 
typicality, the difference between monolinguals and bilinguals was robust for both cues with 
high-frequency (F (1, 94) = 9.83, MSE = 0.01, ηp2 = 0.10, p < 0.01), and cues with low-
frequency associates (F (1, 94) = 23.93, MSE = 0.02, ηp2 = 0.20, p < 0.01). 

 
------------------------------- 

Table 6: Mean response typicality (association strength), rate of production of responses not 
found in the norms, and probability of producing the most common associate (and standard 
deviation in parentheses) with respect to frequency level in Experiment 3.  

Condition Speaker group 
High Frequencya 

Associate 
Low Frequencya 

Associate 

Response Typicality 
Monolinguals 0.45 (0.05) 0.44 (0.04) 

Bilinguals 0.43 (0.05) 0.38 (0.08) 
Rate of Responses 

Not in Norms 
Monolinguals 0.18 (0.09) 0.20 (0.09) 

Bilinguals 0.27 (0.13) 0.31 (0.14) 
Probability of producing 

strongest associate 
Monolinguals 0.57 (0.11) 0.55 (0.10) 

Bilinguals 0.50 (0.12) 0.42 (0.15) 
 

a High frequency = (>70 counts per million); Low frequency = (< 70 counts per million) 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

31

------------------------------- 
 

As in previous experiments, we provide item trends in an appendix (Appendix C), which 
lists differences between speaker groups for each individual item. 

General Discussion 

We investigated the effects of bilingualism on the word association task with the joint 
goals of better understanding bilingualism, and to reveal the nature of the connections 
between the language system and representations of meaning. In all three experiments 
bilinguals were significantly more likely to produce responses not listed in the norms than 
monolinguals. Also in all three experiments, bilinguals produced significantly different 
association responses than monolinguals in some conditions but not in others. In Experiment 
1 bilinguals produced less common association responses than monolinguals (i.e., lower FSG 
from the Nelson et al., 1998, norms) when given cues with a single very strong associate 
(e.g., flipper-dolphin), but differences between speaker groups were smaller (and in the 
opposite direction) when given cues with multiple weakly associated responses (e.g., 
CHICKEN-soup).  In Experiment 2 bilinguals produced association responses that were as 
typical as those of monolinguals when both cue and associate were cognates, but different 
responses when the cue and associate were noncognates. In both Experiments 2 and 3 
bilinguals produced responses that were as typical as those of monolinguals if the associate 
was a high-frequency word, but significantly different responses if the associate was a low-
frequency word. Cognate status (in Experiment 2) and high associate-frequency (in 
Experiments 2 and 3) also increased the probability that bilinguals would produce the 
strongest associate, although in these analyses the differences between bilinguals and 
monolinguals were somewhat more persistent, and frequency was more powerful than 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

32

cognate status for reducing the difference between bilinguals and monolinguals. Importantly, 
in both experiments, bilinguals but not monolinguals, exhibited an effect of associate-
frequency on association responses. The observation of a bilingual effect on semantic 
associations in some but not in other cases provides leverage for identifying the processing 
locus of these differences. 

We began our investigation with the assumptions that the association task is effectively the 
“gold standard” task for assessing processing differences that arise at a semantic level, and 
that the association task is relatively immune to the influence of lexical retrieval (de Groot, 
1989; Nelson et al., 2005). Indeed speakers are given freedom to produce whichever words 
come to mind, and the task is not timed (which reduces emphasis on lexical access-sensitive 
variables such as frequency). On these bases, we argued that models which propose that 
knowledge of two languages influences the nature of semantic representations (e.g., Ameel et 
al., 2009; Boroditsky, 2001) predict that bilinguals and monolinguals should produce 
different types of responses in the association task. As such, our finding of significant 
differences between groups in all experiments – at least at face value – seems to support these 
claims. However, in some cases, effects that appear to be semantic instead arise at a lexical 
processing locus, specifically during language production. We suggest that the finding of 
cognate and frequency effects on bilinguals’ association responses implies a non-semantic 
locus for the observed differences between groups. Although these effects are likely to take 
place during production (it is after all the frequency of the associate that affects bilinguals’ 
responses), the cognate effects are less clearly localized since both the cognateness of the cue 
and that of the associate were needed to produce the cognate effect. 

As reviewed above, multiple studies have documented cognate effects on bilingual 
language processing. The critical difference between cognates and noncognates is overlap in 
form, and as such cognate effects are typically attributed to a lexical or sublexical processing 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

33

locus (for a review of the possible loci of cognate effects in language production see Costa, 
Santesteban, & Caño, 2005). On this view, cognate-cognate pairs facilitate recognition and 
production of the cue and the associate (Costa et al., 2000; Gollan & Acenas, 2004; van Hell 
& Dijkstra, 2002), leading bilinguals to produce the same types of responses as monolinguals 
in the association task. In contrast, when tested with noncognate cues that have noncognate 
associates, bilinguals may have more difficulty rapidly processing the cues and retrieving the 
associates’ names, and instead produce responses that are different from those of 
monolinguals. Note that, on this view, form similarity between translation equivalents does 
not lead to differences in processing at a semantic level, and bilinguals effectively do not 
differ from monolinguals at a semantic level – but rather in the ability to gain access to 
meaning via words in each language. The finding that cognate status of the associate interacts 
with word-frequency (a variable known to  influence lexical retrieval), could be taken as 
further support for the conclusion that cognate status also affected lexical retrieval (and not 
semantics). Note, however, that this conclusion is based on the assumption that information is 
processed in discrete stages in the language system, and on possibly flawed logic (Antón-
Méndez, & Hartsuiker, in press) equating interaction with interactivity.  

An alternative view of cognate representation is that form-similarity leads to activation of 
greater overlap for translation equivalents at a semantic processing level relative to 
noncognate translations (van Hell & de Groot, 1998). On this view, cognates are semantically 
more similar across languages than noncognates. This claim was supported by a bilingual 
word association study in which bilinguals produced associations either in (a) the same 
language as the cue or (b) a different language from the cue. When given cognate cues 
bilinguals produced more translation equivalent responses across languages than when given 
noncognate cues (van Hell & de Groot, 1998). However, the notion of a semantic locus for 
cognate effects has been disputed based on other evidence. For example, when bilinguals rate 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

34

similarity of meaning and similarity of word-form between translations independently these 
ratings are not correlated (Tokowicz, Kroll, de Groot, & van Hell, 2002). Moreover, in the 
present context, the proposal of greater semantic overlap for cognates than for noncognates 
could lead to some problematic predictions.  

Specifically, in our study, bilinguals performed more like monolinguals in the semantic 
association task for cognate-cognate pairs. Assuming a semantic locus for cognate effects, 
when learning two languages at an early age, cognates should reflect semantic associations 
established in both languages, effectively inheriting associations developed between 
languages and leading to greater overlap between languages. Conversely, noncognates should 
reflect semantic associations that are acquired separately in each language. Thus, in the 
association task, bilinguals should have differed most from monolinguals for cognate-cognate 
pairs because Noncog-Noncog pairs would have acquired their semantic representations 
exclusively with the influence of English (and therefore – at least in theory – resembling 
monolinguals to a greater extent) whereas cognate associations would be more influenced by 
associations in Spanish. In light of the frequency-of-associate effects that we observed, a 
factor that van Hell and de Groot (1998) did not control for or analyze in their experiments, it 
seems possible that the differences they observed in responses given within- and between-
language conditions were due not so much to the activation of different conceptual 
representations across languages, but to differences in lexical accessibility of the 
corresponding responses in the two languages. In any event, we would like to suggest that – 
at minimum – at this stage more evidence would be needed to support the claim that cognate 
status (a form level similarity between languages) could influence processing at a semantic 
locus. In addition, it could be argued that more evidence is needed for an effect of cognate 
status on bilingual association responses; in our data the evidence for a frequency effect on 
bilingual responses was considerably more robust (e.g., the interaction between participant 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

35

type and cognate status was not significant for probability of producing the strongest 
associate).  

It might be asked if vocabulary knowledge, rather than difficulty with retrieval produced 
the bilingual effects we reported here. Although the bilinguals we tested are probably not as 
proficient in English as the monolinguals (Gollan et al., 2008), and certainly know fewer very 
low-frequency words than the monolinguals (Gollan & Brown, 2006), our results in this case 
almost certainly could not be attributed to vocabulary differences. First, the bilinguals who 
participated in these experiments were early bilinguals, immersed in an English dominant 
environment, were attending a highly selective university for which English proficiency is 
required, and rated themselves as highly proficient in English (see Table 1). Moreover, the 
materials we used were not very difficult (see appendices), and therefore would be unlikely to 
reveal any differences in vocabulary scores between the two speaker groups.  

What our results clearly demonstrate is that the semantic association task is subject to non-
semantic influences, and they also demonstrate how bilingual effects that initially seem to be 
semantic, may instead originate at a lexical retrieval locus (including the bilingual 
disadvantage in semantic fluency as discussed in the introduction section). In Experiments 2 
and 3 we confirmed the absence of a frequency effect on association responses in 
monolinguals (Nelson et al., 2005), but demonstrated a robust frequency effect on association 
responses in bilinguals. The absence of a frequency effect in monolinguals coupled with the 
presence of a frequency effect in bilinguals on association responses is consistent with 
previous observations of greater frequency effects in picture naming by bilinguals relative to 
monolinguals (Gollan et al., 2008; Ivanova & Costa, 2008), and suggests that differences 
between speaker groups are related to retrieval difficulty in bilinguals. Because associate 
frequency did not eliminate bilingual effects entirely (e.g., see Experiment 3 probability of 
producing strongest associate analyses) the possibility of a small but partially semantic effect 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

36

on association responses remains open. However, our results clearly imply that the first 
stumbling block for bilinguals is not semantic, but rather linked to difficulty retrieving low 
frequency associates. Our focus here was on frequency of the associate because of 
documented differences between bilinguals and monolinguals for retrieving low-frequency 
words in production. At least in principle cue-frequency could have a similar effect (but see 
Duyck, Vanderlest, Desmet, & Hartsuiker, 2008).  

Having identified word frequency as an important factor for understanding how 
bilingualism influences semantic association responses, it was of interest to consider the 
possible role of frequency effects on association responses in a different population. 
Specifically, the bilingual effect reported in Experiment 1, resembles results from 
comparisons between monolinguals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and healthy controls: 
patients produced less typical responses than controls only to strong but not to weak cues 
(Gollan et al., 2006). In that study, it was proposed that the AD effect arises at a semantic 
processing level. If frequency effects do not arise at a semantic level (for a review see 
Almeida et al., 2007), and if the AD effect was purely semantic and not retrieval based, then 
the AD effect on association response should not be modulated by frequency. To consider 
this possibility, we conducted a reanalysis of the published AD data. Using the same 
frequency cutoffs as for the analysis of frequency in Experiment 2 (70 counts per million), 
there were 14 strong cues with low frequency associates, and 12 strong cues with high 
frequency associates in the materials from Gollan et al. (2006) (see Table 7).  

 
------------------------------- 

Table 7: Mean response typicality (association strength) of responses given by patients with 
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and age matched controls to cues with low and high frequency 
associates. Standard deviations in parentheses. 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

37

Speaker Group 
High Frequency 
Associate (n=12) 

Low Frequency 
Associate (n=14) 

AD patients 0.37 (0.13) 0.29 (0.11) 
Controls 0.46 (0.11) 0.37 (0.11) 

 
------------------------------- 

 
First, association responses demonstrated a robust frequency effect; speakers produced 

more typical responses when the strongest associate was a high-frequency word (F (1, 36) = 
20.74, MSE = 0.007, ηp2 = 0.37, p < 0.01). In this case, the frequency effect was robust in 
both speaker groups (both ps ≤ .01).  Thus, like bilinguals, healthy elderly monolinguals and 
monolinguals with AD, exhibited a clear influence of non-semantic factors (i.e., lexical 
accessibility) on responses produced in the association task. In addition, patients with AD 
produced less typical responses than healthy elderly controls (F (1, 36) = 7.73, MSE = 0.019, 
ηp2 = 0.18, p = 0.01), and, quite unlike the bilingual effect on association responses, the AD 
effect was not modulated by frequency (i.e., there was no interaction; F < 1). If anything the 
difference between patients and controls in response typicality was slightly smaller for cues 
with low-frequency associates (.08) than it was for cues with high-frequency associates (.10).  

Together with the experiments presented here, these analyses demonstrate population 
effects that arise at different processing levels. The bilingual effect on association response 
arises at the locus of lexical retrieval and therefore is modulated by word-frequency and 
cognate status. In contrast, the AD effect arises at a semantic level (for reviews, see 
McGlinchey-Berroth & Milberg, 1993; Nebes, 1989; Nebes, 1992; Ober, Shenaut, & Reed, 
1995) and therefore is not modulated by word-frequency (but see Thompson-Schill, Gabrieli, 
& Fleischman, 1999).  



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

38

Couched in more broadly relevant terms, the results we obtained reveal the semantic 
association task is not quite as purely semantic as previously proposed. Instead, the gold-
standard task which is thought to exclusively reflect the organization of meaning 
representations, is also susceptible to influences from lexical access processes (in bilinguals, 
and also in aging monolinguals). Given the present results, it seems wise to consider how 
ease of lexical access may influence association responses in future investigations, and to 
take this into consideration when developing accounts of semantic memory based on 
speakers’ responses in the association task.  

 



Semantic Association in Bilinguals 
 

 

39

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Appendix A: List of items used in Experiment 1, including their frequency and the mean 

difference in response typicality (FSG) between mono- and bilinguals excluding responses 
that were not in the association norms. 
    Strong cues Group       
Cue Cue Translation Target  Target TranslationTarget Freq Freq Level Diffs. 
LIBRARY biblioteca book  libro 434.64 High -0.02 
CRIB cuna baby  bebé 258.1 High 0.11 
HUSBAND marido/esposo wife  esposa 248.16 High 0.05 
OPTION opción choice  elección/selección 115.81 High 0.19 
ASTRONOMY astronomía star  estrella 100.78 High 0.04 
THRONE trono king  rey 99.66 High -0.16 
WEAPON arma gun  pistola 98.94 High -0.04 
CORK corcho wine  vino 79.39 High 0.00 
ASHTRAY cenicero cigarette  cigarillo 71.17 High 0.04 
SHINGLE tablilla roof  techo 55.75 Low 0.06 
DUPLICATE duplicado copy  copia 51.01 Low 0.13 
SKUNK zorrillo smell  olor 49.78 Low -0.08 
KEG barril beer  cerveza 48.72 Low -0.03 
TRIBE tribu Indian  indio 46.82 Low -0.02 
CHLORINE cloro pool  alberca/piscina 40.95 Low 0.21 
MARGARINE margarina butter  mantequilla 27.37 Low 0.00 
WHISKERS bigotes de animal beard  barba 25.08 Low 0.00 
BROTH caldo soup  sopa 20.22 Low 0.08 
BRIDE novia groom  novio 5.75 Low 0.03 
FLIPPER aleta dolphin  delfín 3.02 Low -0.06 
        
    Weak cues Group         
Cue Cue Translation Target  Target TranslationTarget Freq Freq Level Diffs. 



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48

CRISIS crisis problem  problema 505.75 High -0.01 
CONDEMN condenar die  morir 239.05 High 0.00 
CONFUSION confusión lost  perdido 211.9 High -0.03 
NATURAL natural nature  naturaleza 188.99 High -0.01 
RESISTANCE resistencia fight  pelear 142.4 High -0.01 
STANDARD estandár normal  normal 92.12 High -0.02 
BODY cuerpo muscle  músculo 88.32 High 0.01 
FARMER ranchero farm  granja 85.47 High 0.00 
MASTERY maestría skill  habilidad 81.34 High 0.02 
RENOUNCE renunciar announce  anunciar 74.53 High 0.00 
FRAY deshilacharse tear  romper 61.51 Low 0.00 
DISOWN repudiar abandon  abandonar 54.47 Low -0.01 
FIELD campo football  fútbol Americano 32.63 Low 0.00 
OVERWHELM abrumar stress/excited  estrés/excitado 31.56 Low 0.01 
TACT tacto polite  cortés 21.79 Low 0.04 
RANGE ámbito stove  estufa 20.34 Low 0.00 
CHICKEN pollo/gallina soup  sopa 20.22 Low 0.00 
CLEANER limpiador maid  sirvienta/criada 17.26 Low -0.01 
OBSCURE oscuro/ocultar hidden/weird  oculto/extraño 7.49 Low 0.01 
GRACE gracia Jones  Jones 0 Low 0.00 



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Appendix B: List of items used in Experiment 2, including their frequency and associated 
difference in response typicality (FSG) between mono- and bilinguals excluding responses 
that were not in the association norms. 
    Cognate/Cognate Pairs     
Cue Cue Translation Target Target TranslationTarget Freq Freq. Level Diffs. 
COUNT contar  NUMBER número 406.26 High -0.05 
NOTION noción  IDEA idea 398.44 High 0.11 
HOUR hora  MINUTE minuto 283.41 High 0.03 
ZOO zoológico  ANIMAL animal 260.22 High 0.04 
MINUTE minuto SECOND segundo 258.55 High -0.01 
CABLE cable TELEVISION televisión 114.13 High 0.02 
ASTRONOMY astronomía  STAR estrella 100.78 High -0.01 
NICOTINE nicotina CIGARETTE cigarrillo 71.17 High -0.06 
TOTAL total  SUM suma 48.27 Low 0.01 
ADDICTION adicción DRUG droga 47.26 Low -0.02 
PRESCRIPTION prescripción  DRUG droga 47.26 Low 0.03 
TRIBE tribu  INDIAN indio 46.82 Low 0.00 
PRECISE preciso  EXACT exacto 29.72 Low 0.02 
SERENE sereno  CALM calmar 25.36 Low 0.00 
ARTERY arteria  VEIN vena 15.03 Low 0.05 
KETCHUP catsup  MUSTARD mostaza 4.69 Low 0.08 
POPEYE popeye  SPINACH espinaca 4.13 Low 0.00 
CONDITIONER acondicionador  SHAMPOO champú 2.18 Low 0.02 
 
    Cognate/Noncognate Pairs         
Cue Cue Translation Target Target TranslationTarget Freq Freq. Level Diffs. 
PONDER pensar  THINK pensar 2004.13 High 0.01 
COMPACT compacto  SMALL pequeño 601.45 High -0.01 



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CELEBRATION celebración  PARTY fiesta 450.78 High 0.02 
FINAL final  END final 434.75 High -0.02 
DOLLARS dólares MONEY dinero 403.69 High -0.04 
CENT centavo  MONEY dinero 403.69 High -0.05 
VETERAN veterano  WAR guerra 362.23 High 0.06 
ARCTIC ártico  COLD frío 165.7 High 0.01 
RODEO rodeo  HORSE caballo 132.51 High -0.02 
THRONE trono  KING rey 99.66 High 0.03 
DOZEN docena  TWELVE doce 70.73 High 0.05 
CALENDAR calendario DATE fecha 63.35 Low 0.02 
HUMOR humor  FUNNY gracioso 50.84 Low -0.02 
CHLORINE cloro  POOL alberca 40.95 Low 0.01 
REPTILE reptil  SNAKE víbora 23.02 Low 0.01 
TOASTER tostador  OVEN horno 19.72 Low 0.05 
CONVENT convento  NUN monja 10.45 Low -0.03 
ALUMINUM aluminio  CAN lata 9.27 Low 0.01 
        
    Noncognate/Cognate Pairs      
Cue Cue Translation Target Target TranslationTarget Freq Freq. Level Diffs. 
ALIKE parecido  DIFFERENT diferente 400.56 High 0.00 
BUMPER parachoques  CAR carro 354.3 High 0.03 
DASHBOARD tablero  CAR carro 354.3 High 0.00 
BASSINET moisés  BABY bebé 258.1 High 0.08 
VENT respiradero   AIR aire 251.51 High -0.01 
SHEET sábana  PAPER papel 225.64 High 0.01 
SHERIFF jerife POLICE policía 206.37 High -0.05 
RAILROAD ferrocarril TRAIN tren 81.62 High -0.03 
CORK corcho  WINE vino 79.39 High 0.07 
FUEL combustible  GAS gas 77.26 High -0.02 
ASHTRAY cenicero  CIGARETTE cigarrillo 71.17 High -0.06 



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CUCUMBER pepino  VEGETABLES vegetales 58.66 Low 0.02 
GAVEL martillo  JUDGE juez 58.66 Low 0.06 
SLACKS pantalones PANTS pantalón 15.75 Low 0.06 
GEM joya   DIAMOND diamante 14.3 Low 0.01 
REEF arrecife CORAL coral 5.3 Low 0.05 
MOLTEN fundido  LAVA lava 3.52 Low 0.02 
FLIPPER aleta  DOLPHIN delfín 3.02 Low -0.03 
         
    Noncognate/Noncognate Pairs   
Cue Cue Translation Target Target TranslationTarget Freq Freq. Level Diffs 
FINGERS dedos  HANDS manos 725.31 High 0.06 
FIST puño  HAND mano  725.3 High 0.01 
HUGE enorme  SMALL pequeño 601.45 High -0.02 
HALF mitad  WHOLE entero 320.39 High -0.01 
LAUGH reír  CRY llorar 120.56 High 0.00 
SOCCER fútbol  BALL pelota 111.51 High 0.06 
WINGS agujeta  BIRD pájaro 102.85 High 0.07 
SOCKS calcetines  SHOES zapatos 79.16 High 0.03 
SHOELACE cinta  TIE atar 61.45 Low -0.01 
KNOT nudo ROPE cuerda 41.62 Low 0.06 
LOST perdido  FOUND encontrado 30.39 Low -0.01 
SKILLET sartén  PAN cacerola 27.32 Low 0.05 
MOW cortar  LAWN césped 26.93 Low 0.01 
BUCKLE hebilla  BELT cinturón 26.87 Low 0.00 
COMB peine BRUSH cepillo 23.74 Low 0.04 
FORK tenedor  SPOON cuchara 15.42 Low 0.07 
DUSTPAN recogedor  BROOM escoba 7.82 Low 0.11 
WASHER lavadora  DRYER secadora 2.74 Low 0.11 



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Appendix C: List of items used in Experiment 3, including their frequency and associated 
difference in response typicality (FSG) between mono- and bilinguals excluding responses 
that were not in the association norms. 
    High Frequency Associates     
Cue Cue Translation Target Target TranslationaTarget Freq Diffs. 
BACON bacon EGGS huevos 86.03 0.01 
BANKER banquero MONEY dinero 403.69 0.00 
BOUQUET ramo FLOWERS flores 93.52 -0.02 
BREEZE brisa WIND viento 120.11 0.15 
BRIEF breve SHORT corto 201.84 -0.06 
CASHIER cajero MONEY dinero 403.69 0.04 
COMPASS brujula DIRECTION direccion 108.38 -0.07 
CORK corcho WINE vino 79.39 0.01 
CRIB cuna BABY bebe 258.1 0.00 
CROW cuervo BIRD pajaro 102.85 0.01 
CROWD muchedumbre PEOPLE gente 1482.85 -0.06 
DAIRY lacteo MILK leche 100.11 -0.08 
DOCK muelle BOAT barca 76.42 0.09 
FABLE fabula STORY historia 228.49 0.03 
FLAME llama FIRE fuego 162.29 -0.02 
HURT herido PAIN dolor 84.09 -0.09 
KITE cometa FLY volar 95.81 0.04 
LOBE lobulo EAR oreja 87.71 0.03 
MATTRESS colchon BED cama 269.89 -0.04 
POOR pobre RICH rico 113.74 0.19 
PRINT imprimir WRITE escribir 464.64 0.01 
PROFIT ganancia MONEY dinero 403.69 -0.03 
SADDLE silla de montar HORSE caballo 132.51 0.00 



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SHUTTER persiana WINDOW ventana 200.22 0.10 
SISTER hermana BROTHER hermano 138.44 0.03 
SOFT blando HARD duro 207.04 0.12 
SPLINTER astilla WOOD madera 97.37 0.05 
TELLER contador BANK banco 172.57 0.04 
THIGH muslo LEG pierna 175.42 0.01 
TILE azulejo FLOOR suelo 176.03 -0.03 
TOES dedos FEET pies 327.21 -0.01 

 
Low Frequency Associates 

Cue Cue Translation Target Target TranslationTarget Freq Diffs. 
ANTLER cornamenta DEER ciervo 11.73 0.09 
ARROW flecha BOW arco 12.57 0.00 
ASHTRAY cenicero CIGARETTE cigarrillo 4.47 -0.01 
BREAD pan BUTTER mantequilla 27.37 0.01 
BRIDE novia GROOM novio 5.75 0.14 
BUBBLE burbuja GUM chicle 8.6 0.02 
BULL toro COW vaca 40.28 -0.01 
CUB cria BEAR oso 16.2 0.00 
DENIM vaquero JEANS vaquero 12.79 -0.02 
DENTIST dentista TEETH dientes 3.13 0.06 
DILL eneldo PICKLE en vinagre 3.58 0.01 
DINNER cena SUPPER cena 27.6 0.03 
FAWN cervatillo DEER ciervo 11.73 0.12 
GRANDMA abuela GRANDPA abuelo 1.56 0.04 
JIGSAW rompecabezas PUZZLE puzzle 8.71 0.02 
LEAP salto JUMP salto 66.76 0.05 
LOOSE suelto TIGHT apretado 38.99 0.00 
LOSER perdedor WINNER ganador 17.04 0.13 
MARSH pantano SWAMP cienaga 7.49 0.04 



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MIST neblina FOG niebla 9.89 -0.01 
PEEL peladura ORANGE naranja 19.61 0.09 
PUB bar BEER cerveza 48.71 0.06 
REFLECT reflejar MIRROR espejo 49.16 0.00 
SPOON cuchara FORK tenedor 14.86 0.16 
STEPS escalones STAIRS escaleras 44.08 0.00 
STING picar BEE abeja 16.65 -0.04 
STRONG fuerte WEAK debil 59.39 0.03 
SUNRISE amanecer SUNSET puesta de sol 10.1 0.08 
SYRUP jarabe PANCAKES crepes 2.57 -0.06 
THIN fino FAT gordo 57.32 0.06 
TOAD sapo FROG rana 9.39 -0.04 

 
aExpected translations are listed. Alternative/acceptable translations are possible for several 
items.  



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Footnotes 
i Additional exploratory analyses revealed that cog-cog pairs may have had a greater 

number of alternative associates which were also cognates and therefore also easier for 
bilinguals to produce. For example, the most common associate of the Cog-Cog cue 
addiction (adicción) is drug (droga), but other cognate associates produced were also 
cognates; liquor (licor), alcohol (alcohol), illness (enfermedad). In contrast, the most 
common associate of the Noncog-Noncog cue laugh (reir) is cry (llorar), and other associates 
were noncognates; funny (gracioso), joke (chiste, broma), humor (humor). Thus, the presence 
of alternative associates that were also cognates may have reduced differences between 
bilinguals and monolinguals in the cog-cog condition. However, we did not manipulate or 
match between conditions for the number of weakly associated alternative cognate responses, 
thus we can only speculate as to whether or not the cognate status of alternative associates 
was influential here.