Do Bilinguals Have One Verbal Repertoire or Two? Evidence from Listener Word-Emotion Responses

Word emotion data were used to explore whether the two languages of bilingual speakers represent one or two verbal repertoires. Spanish–English bilinguals and monolingual speakers of Spanish and English rated the pleasantness of behavior analysis and general clinical terms in Spanish and English translations. Bilinguals' pleasantness ratings of Spanish and English terms were more similar than those made by Spanish and English monolinguals. This finding suggests that the Spanish and English listener repertoires of bilinguals are integrated, as one might expect from a derived stimulus relations perspective. Two control studies ruled out alternative explanations. We discuss the general importance of bilingual research in behavior analysis and the challenges of replicating and extending this finding and of reconciling it with the apparently contrasting results of mainstream investigations of bilingual repertoires.