ABSTRACT
In recent years a number of studies have begun to explore how structural characteristics of different languages shape language users’ cognitive processing (Green, 1998; Levinson, Kita, Haun, & Rasch, 2002; Yoshida & Smith, 2005). Whereas the majority of studies on this issue have focused on monolingual users, an increasing number have begun to use second language learners or bilinguals (e.g., Bassetti, 2007; Cook, Bassetti, Kasai, Sasaki, & Takahashi, 2006). Kousta, Vinson, and Vigliocco (2008) advocate studies that include both monolinguals and bilinguals as a new way of approaching the topic of the link between language and thought. They note that if language indeed affects cognition, then one could hypothesize an effect of the second language on the ‘cognitive dispositions’ associated with a first language (Kousta et al., 2008, p. 844), or vice versa. Use of monolinguals and bilinguals in the same study could also, it is proposed, offer a way of investigating the degree to which semantic representations of the bilingual’s two languages are functionally autonomous. An autonomous view would be supported if bilinguals’ performance in each of their languages is indistinguishable from that of monolingual counterparts. By contrast, an interactionist view would be supported if bilinguals’ performance is influenced by their knowledge of the other language and, thus, differs from the performance of monolingual counterparts.
