Language Dominance and Sociolinguistic Experience Are Related to Language Control and Domain-General Monitoring Control: An Investigation in Bilinguals Who Live in a Minority/Majority Sociolinguistic Setting.

Ruilin Wu,Esli Struys

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.594648

Abstract

Bilingual language control in production tasks with language switches is supposed to be linked to domain-general cognitive control. In the present study, we investigated the role of language dominance, measured on a continuous scale, in the relationship between measures of language control elicited through language switching in a picture naming task and non-linguistic cognitive control induced by stimulus-response interference in a Simon task. In our sample of bilinguals who speak both a minority and majority language (language pair of Uyghur-Chinese), the results showed that as bilinguals were more L2-dominant, a pattern of reversed asymmetry switch costs in language control, i.e., larger L2 than L1 switch costs, was observed. Furthermore, the findings showed that recent exposure to the L1 minority language was associated with the change in language switch costs in terms of both response latencies and accuracy rates. This suggests a role for sociolinguistic context in bilingual language control. Concerning cross-domain generality, globally sustained language control was found to be correlated with domain-general monitoring control in response latencies for all bilingual participants. It lends support to the idea that bilinguals tap into monitoring control in the context of language switching. Additionally, the cross-domain overlap was found between two non-equivalent measures (global language control vs. cognitive inhibitory control) in response latencies, specifically for L1-dominant bilinguals. This suggests that language dominance may have an impact on cross-domain generality in language-switching processes.

Highlights

Bilinguals commonly experience the practice of producing oral utterances in one language and switching into the other language
It is noteworthy that the pattern of larger L1 switch costs during bilingual production may not be identically present in the modality of bilingual comprehension, because there is some controversy about the direction of switch costs in bilingual comprehension
Outliers larger or smaller than 2.5 standard deviations from the mean response time of correct trials were removed from further analyses of the picture naming task and the Simon task

Summary

Introduction

Bilinguals commonly experience the practice of producing oral utterances in one language and switching into the other language. The landmark study by Meuter and Allport (1999) initially explored bilingual performance through a language-switching naming task. It was found that responses to the switch trials for both languages took longer than to the non-switch trials, but the switch cost for each language differed depending on the relative language strength, with higher switch costs for the dominant than for the non-dominant language This empirical finding of dominance-related asymmetric switch costs, as first described by Meuter and Allport (1999), is consistent with the predictions from the inhibitory control (IC) model (Green, 1998). The study by Litcofsky and Van Hell (2017) showed the presence of switch costs in both switching directions and larger costs when switching into the dominant language, which shared similarities with the switching pattern in bilingual production

Methods

Results

Conclusion