Background
The goal of this study was to examine the effect of cognates on Spanish–English bilingual children's English reading fluency. Because cognates lead to higher levels of non‐target language activation, we hypothesised that the presence of cognates would result in reduced reading fluency for bilingual children.
Methods
Monolingual English‐speaking children and Spanish–English bilingual children (ages = 8–13 years) read aloud two stories in English. One story contained cognate words, while the other story did not.
Results
Results revealed that bilingual children made more errors and read more slowly when reading a story containing cognates.
Conclusions
These findings indicate that the presence of cognates in a text disrupts bilinguals' oral reading fluency, suggesting that lexical‐level, local co‐activation can have a global effect on bilinguals' ability to engage in a higher‐level reading task.