English-Spanish Cognates in the Paivio, Yuille, and Madigan Imagery Norms Rated for Orthographic Transparency

Cognates are orthographically, semantically, and syntactically identical (or similar) words in two languages. The English and Spanish languages share more than 20,000 cognates, and many are essential academic vocabulary. Research has shown that cognates facilitate vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension for language learners (when compared to non-cognate words). In Experiment 1, orthographic transparency ratings for 440 English-Spanish cognate nouns drawn from the Paivio et al. imagery norms were collected from 41 college students. Our participants were presented with lists of English-Spanish cognate word pairs presented side-by-side and were asked to rate the orthographic similarity of the pairs on a Likert scale of 1 to 7. The analysis of the ratings suggests that the earlier an English word deviates from its Spanish equivalent (its “point of differentiation”), the lower the cognate transparency rating it is assigned (extending the generalizability of the “initial letter effect” previously reported). In Experiment 2, we validated these ratings by having 43 new participants quickly judge whether English-Spanish word pairs were or were not cognates. We found that reaction times were strongly correlated with transparency ratings and the points of differentiation, supporting the usefulness of the transparency ratings obtained in Experiment 1. A limitation of Experiment 1 was that the cognate pairs varied only by page number, and the individual cognate pairs were not ordered differently. Additionally, we recommend a larger participant sample to include persons other than college students.