Four experiments examined the effects of language characteristics on voice identification. In Experiment 1, monolingual English listeners identified bilinguals' voices much better when they spoke English than when they spoke German. The opposite outcome was found in Experiment 2, in which the listeners were monolingual in German. In Experiment 3, monolingual English listeners also showed better voice identification when bilinguals spoke a familiar language (English) than when they spoke an unfamiliar one (Spanish). However, English-Spanish bilinguals hearing the same voices showed a different pattern, with the English-Spanish difference being statistically eliminated. Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that, for English-dominant listeners, voice recognition deteriorates systematically as the passage being spoken is made less similar to English by rearranging words, rearranging syllables, and reversing normal text. Taken together, the four experiments confirm that language familiarity plays an important role in voice identification.

Spanish language tests of 801 Cuban and Mexican immigrants showed no evidence of language loss during 50 years of U.S. residence; a few years after immigration, their English vocabulary approximated that of English monolinguals. The critical-age hypothesis was not supported for the acquisition of English vocabulary when English schooling and language usage were controlled by multiple regression. Most Ss continued to speak about as much Spanish as English; but read, wrote, and heard (on television and radio) far more English than Spanish. Under these conditions, Ss maintained Spanish dominance on tests of vocabulary recognition, lexical decision, and oral comprehension. Dominance was task specific and shifted to English on a category generation task about 12 years after immigration. No evidence of bilingual language interference was found; this is attributed to the strong Spanish foundation of the participants.

This study examines the ability of bilinguals to judge their linguistic competence. Participants evaluated their Spanish and English language skills both before and after administration of the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey, which provided an objective measure of these skills. Self-assessments were more accurate for Spanish than for English and, in the case of English, varied with the skill being rated. Feedback from the objective test improved self-rating accuracy more for Spanish than for English. There was little support for the conclusion that the language in which the self-assessments are presented influences bilinguals’ self-ratings of their linguistic skills. Implications for the use of self-assessments in applied situations are discussed.

The present experiments explored various measures of English and Spanish language ability and compared monolingual and bilingual subjects on tests of cognitive skill. Language ability was assessed in Experiment 1. These measures were found to be highly correlated with each other, with at least two factors needed to describe the associations among the tests in each language. In Experiment 2, subjects were given tests of cognitive skill. To be included in this study, all subjects were required to show adequate understanding of English and were divided into monolingual and bilingual groups on the basis of their Spanish abilities. Monolinguals scored higher than bilinguals on most of the measures of cognitive skill, but subsequent comparisons of the monolinguals with high and low bilingual subgroups suggested that the differences were attributable to those subjects characterized as low bilinguals.

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