On the encapsulation of bilingual language control

Abstract

Abstract One purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that prevalent patterns of bilingual language control lead to greater enhancement of the ability to resolve Stimulus-Stimulus conflict compared to Stimulus-Response conflict. To that end 104 bilinguals and 62 monolinguals completed four commonly used nonverbal interference tasks with varied S-S and S-R incompatibilities. No bilingual advantages were observed in any of the tasks. A second purpose was to further investigate whether a general inhibitory-control ability exists by examining inter-task correlations in the current and previous studies. We conclude that there may be a shared mechanism for interference control across spatial Stroop tasks and Simon tasks, but that this mechanism is apparently not recruited during bilingual language control to the extent that such practice would enhance a general ability. Rather, inhibition in language processing may be encapsulated within a lexical-identification system as assumed by Dijkstra and van Heuven’s bilingual-interactive-activation plus model and its update Multilink.