Semantic and letter fluency in Spanish-English bilinguals.
Abstract
Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolinguals completed 12 semantic, 10 letter, and 2 proper name fluency categories. Bilinguals produced fewer exemplars than monolinguals on all category types, but the difference between groups was larger (and more consistent) on semantic categories. Bilinguals and monolinguals produced the same number of errors across all category types. The authors discuss 2 accounts of the similarities and differences between groups and the interaction with category type, including (a) cross-language interference and (b) relatively weak connections in the bilingual lexical system because of reduced use of words specific to each language. Surprisingly, bilinguals' fluency scores did not improve when they used words in both languages. This result suggests that voluntary language switching incurs a processing cost.
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Bilinguals display consistent deficits on verbal fluency measures, especially semantic fluency, even if they may answer in either language.
“Performance on these tasks reveals systematic deficits for bilingual participants, particularly in semantic fluency conditions [33–37], even if responses can be provided in either language [38].”
From Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain (2012) · cites this paper as [34]
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- Authors
- Gollan, T. H., Montoya, R. I., & Werner, G. A.
- Affiliations
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Claremont McKenna College (US)
- ORCID
- Gollan, Tamar H.
- Venue
- Neuropsychology
- Published
- 2002
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 562-576
- ISSN
- 0894-4105 (ISSN-L)
- 1931-1559
- OpenAlex
- W1981847297
- Cited by
- 458
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 62 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 23 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 25 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 1.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Neuropsychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (DC00191-01A2, DC00041-06)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Keywords
- semantic fluency, phonemic fluency, Spanish-English bilinguals, bilingualism, language transfer, language switching, bilingual advantage
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Language, Male, Semantics, Verbal Behavior, Multilingualism
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