Children's Foreign Word Recognition at First Exposure: The Role of Phonological Similarity and Utterance Position

Abstract The current study examined how children apply their phonological knowledge to recognize translation equivalents in a foreign language. Target words for recognition were either phonologically similar (cognate) or dissimilar (noncognate) to words they already knew in their first language. To examine how recognition of such words is impacted by their position in the utterance, target words were either embedded in an edge (Experiment 1) or non‐edge (Experiment 2) position in the carrier phrase. Results show that preschool‐aged children can recognize words from a foreign language when those words are phonologically similar to words they know in their first language, and this is not constrained by the word's location within an utterance. Children are at an advantage recognizing new lexical items in a new language if those items are similar in form to words they already know in their first language.