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 standardized set of line drawings of common objects (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980). Name agreement decreased as language skill decreased, and agreement was lower when labels were given in Spanish rather than in English. The relationship between name agreement and word frequency, word length, and (in the case of English) age of acquisition was assessed; both word frequency and word length were found to be related to agreement. Modal responses given by monolingual subjects were nearly identical in the two languages, and the types of non-modal responses were affected by both naming language and language skill.