PICTURE-NAMING AGREEMENT IN MONOLINGUALS AND BILINGUALS

Name agreement in Spanish and English in response to 264 pictures was assessed in monolinguals and in bilinguals, who varied in rated skill in the two languages. Most of the pictures were adapted from a standar dized set of line drawings of common objects (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980). Name agreement decreased as language skill decreased, and agree ment was lower when labels were given in Spanish rather than in Englis h. The relationship between name agreement and word frequency, word le ngth, and (in the case of English) age of acquisition was assessed; bo th word frequency and word length were found to be related to agreemen t. Modal responses given by monolingual subjects were nearly identical in the two languages, and the types of non-modal responses were affec ted by both naming language and language skill.