The non-selective and the cumulative frequency hypotheses offer competing explanations to the neurological origins of the cognate facilitation effect. Researchers have yet to establish which of these has the strongest empirical foundation, with important theoretical implications. This experiment tested the cumulative frequency hypothesis with 22 SwedishEnglish bilinguals in the eye-tracking paradigm. Data was gathered and analysed from sentence stimuli containing cognate and control words using mixed-effects statistical analysis. A significant interaction was found between Cognate Facilitation and Contextual Diversity in FFD. The results were inconclusive as regard to the dichotomy or symbiosis of non-selectivity and cumulative frequency as neurological phenomena. However, they did indicate the strong presence of cognate facilitation throughout both early and late stages of processing.