An analysis of the relationship between linguistic performance and general cognitive abilities in bilingual speakers

Abstract

A major issue in bilingualism research is how the bilingual mind processes and reconciles two languages without apparent difficulty when trying to use only one. Research has revealed that when bilinguals produce speech, cross-linguistic competition induced by simultaneous activation of both languages is circumvented by inhibitory and selection mechanisms that allow for phonological articulation of the desired language. Such language-specificprocesses are presumed to derive from domain-general mechanisms that monitor and regulate behavior, to ensure high levels of cognitive performance. To examine the connection between language-specific and domain-general processes, performance on linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks are compared. In our study, Spanish-English participants perform linguistic tasks that induce competition, inhibition, and selection (e.g., production of translation equivalents that are phonologically similar in the two languages) as well as non-linguistic tasks that induce similar challenges (e.g., alternating between visual or auditory stimuli depending on the task requirements). A fine-grained acoustic analysis of timing and accuracy in verbal production (i.e., VOT, vowel formants, frication spectral peak) will be performed. Positive correlations between performances on the two task categories would support the theoretical view that efficient mental manipulation of two languages relies on control mechanisms that are generally involved in higher-order cognitive behavior.