Inhibitory control processes and lexical access in trilingual speech production

Abstract

This study tests whether or not trilingual language learners rely on inhibitory control (IC) when accessing words during speech production. In particular, it investigates the extent to which second language (L2) and third language (L3) lexical robustness modulates such reliance. English language learners of French and Spanish participated in a picture-naming task containing language switches in all three of their languages. Analyses were conducted on the switching performance of the three languages followed by an exploration of how these effects were modulated by L2 and L3 lexical robustness. The results support reliance on IC for all three languages. Furthermore, the strength of L2 lexical robustness affected performance in all languages whereas the strength of L3 lexical robustness only affected L3 performance. The results suggest that in the context of having to switch between three languages within a single experiment, trilingual speakers rely on IC.

Inhibitory control predicts language switching performance in trilingual speech production

“…Planned contrasts indicated significant differences in the lexical robustness scores between all three languages (all p s < .001). See Schwieter and Sunderman (2011) for further details.…”

“…They first completed the informed consent form followed by the language questionnaire. All participants then completed a verbal fluency task, the details of which are presented elsewhere (see Schwieter & Sunderman, 2008, 2009, 2011). In this task, participants were presented with a category (five semantic, five letter), and for each category they were instructed to produce as many exemplars as possible within sixty seconds.…”

“…A number of studies have used a variant of the picturenaming task reported in the present study (e.g., Costa & Santesteban, 2004;Schwieter & Sunderman, 2008). However, the addition of a third response language was included to explore trilingual language processing and reliance on inhibitory control within the same experiment (see also Schwieter & Sunderman, 2011). In this trilingual adaption of the task, ten standardized black and white line drawings (Snodgrass & Vanderwart, 1980) of a pencil, house, car, dog, book, cat, chair, table, bear, and heart were presented individually on a computer screen in 60 lists ranging from 5-14 pictures in length.…”

“…While each of these trilingual studies has made progress towards a better understanding of the reliance on inhibitory control in speech production, they have yet to address the extent to which switching performance is affected by the language on the trial immediately preceding a language switch – a factor that Schwieter and Sunderman (2011) recently noted may impact switching performance. Given the predictions of the Inhibitory Control Model (Green, 1998), our working hypothesis for the trilingual case is that separate task schemas support naming in each language, and each non-target language is suppressed independently.…”

Cognate effect and lexical processing in English-Spanish and Spanish-English bilinguals

“…These studies demonstrate how two (or more) mental lexicons may be stimulated at one time within different processes of language processing. The process of inhibitory control (a process which effectively blocks a non-target language, theorized to occur at less proficient levels of language use -see Schwieter & Sunderman, 2008;Schwieter & Sunderman, 2011;Schwieter, 2013), and language-specific mechanisms models (Schwieter & Sunderman, 2008) have been explored, but research is nowhere near conclusive in this area (Finkbeiner, Almeida, Janssen & Caramazza, 2006). While results are not completely consistent, cognates have served as a useful tool for investigating cross-linguistic influence, and considerable headway has been made in this area of linguistics.…”