Do cross-lingual interactions occur even with structures of different word order in different languages of bilinguals? Or could the latter provide immunity to interference of the contrasting characteristics of the other language? To answer this question, we examined the reported speech production (utterances reporting what just happened; e.g., Holly asked what Eric ate) of two groups of proficient, unbalanced bilinguals with varying similarity between their native (L1-Spanish/L1-Dutch) and second language (L2-English). The results showed that both groups of bilinguals produced word order errors when formulating indirect What-questions in L2, regardless of how similar the L1 was to the L2 in that respect. Our findings suggest that in the case of reported speech production in the examined bilingual groups, cross-linguistic syntactic differences by themselves suffice to induce language interference, and that the degree of similarity between the L1 and the L2 does not seem to modulate the magnitude of this effect.

The aim of this study was to analyze the performance of Spanish–English bilinguals on the Golden Stroop Test. The effects of bilingualism, participants' age, age of acquisition of the second language, and proficiency in each language were analyzed. Participants consisted of 71 Spanish–English bilinguals, 40 English monolinguals, and 11 Spanish monolinguals from South Florida. Proficiency in Spanish and English was established using a self-report questionnaire and the English and Spanish versions of the Boston Naming Test. In bilinguals, the Golden Stroop Test was administered in English and in Spanish. Overall, performance was slower in bilinguals than in monolinguals. No significant differences were observed in color reading but bilinguals performed worse in the naming color condition. Even though bilinguals were 5% to 10% slower in the color–word condition, one-way ANOVAs revealed no statistically significant differences between groups. Within the bilingual group, the Stroop Test scores were similar in both English and Spanish. Age of acquisition of the second language did not predict the Stroop Test performance. Repeated measures ANOVA demonstrated a significant interaction between Language Proficiency × Language (in which the test was administered) in some of the ST conditions. In balanced bilinguals, the language used in the ST did not matter, but in unbalanced subjects, the best-spoken language showed better results. In addition, our results support the presence of both between- and within-language interference in Spanish–English bilinguals. Different conceptualization models of the structure of bilingual memory are disclosed. (JINS, 2002, 8, 819–827.)