We tested whether verb-based prediction in late bilinguals is facilitated when the verb is a cognate versus non-cognate. Spanish–English bilinguals and Chinese–English bilinguals (control) listened to English sentences such as “The girl will adopt the dog” while viewing a scene containing either a dog and unadoptable objects (predictable condition) or a dog and other adoptable animals (unpredictable condition). The verb was either a cognate or non-cognate between Spanish and English and never a cognate between Chinese and English. Both groups of bilinguals were more likely to look at the target (the dog) in the predictable versus unpredictable condition. However, only low-proficient L1 Spanish bilinguals showed greater and earlier prediction when the verb was cognate than when it was non-cognate, suggesting that cognate facilitation effect occurs not only on the cognate word itself but also on prediction based on this cognate word, and that this effect is modulated by L2 proficiency.

中文翻译：

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第二语言中基于动词的语义预测的同源促进效应受第二语言熟练度的调节


我们测试了当动词是同源词与非同源词时，晚期双语者中基于动词的预测是否有利于。西班牙语-英语双语者和中英双语者（对照）在观看包含狗和不可收养的物体（可预测条件）或狗和其他可收养动物（不可预测条件）的场景时，听了诸如“The girl will adopt the dog”等英语句子。这个动词在西班牙语和英语之间要么是同源词，要么是非同源词，在中文和英语之间从来没有同源词。两组双语者都更有可能在可预测与不可预测的条件下观察目标（狗）。然而，只有低熟练度的 L1 西班牙语双语者在动词同源时表现出比非同源时更大、更早的预测，这表明同源促进效应不仅发生在同源词本身，也发生在基于该同源词的预测上，并且这种效应受到 L2 熟练度的调节。