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

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.

The concept of inhibition in bilingual control.

“…Yet, many studies where an asymmetrical switch cost pattern would be expected did not observe such an effect (e.g., Christoffels et al, 2007;Declerck et al, 2012;Ivanova & Hernandez, 2021;Kang et al, 2018;Slevc et al, 2016). Moreover, several recent studies even found larger L2 than L1 switch costs (Bonfieni et al, 2019;Declerck, Stephan, et al, 2015;Liu, Timmer, et al, 2019;Timmer et al, 2019;Zheng, Roelofs, Erkan, & Lemhöfer, 2020; see also de Bruin et al, 2020;Declerck & Philipp, 2015b;Jevtović et al, 2020;Wu & Struys, 2021). This erratic pattern has led previous review articles to the conclusion that asymmetrical switch costs, as an empirical effect, are not replicable across studies (Bobb & Wodniecka, 2013;Declerck & Philipp, 2015a).…”

“…Language control is typically assumed to consist of two processes (e.g., Declerck, 2020; Ma et al, 2016; Peeters & Dijkstra, 2018; Seo & Prat, 2019; Wu & Struys, 2021). Most studies of language control investigated reactive language control, which entails a control process that is implemented when cross-language interference is detected.…”

A Domain-General Monitoring Account of Bilingual Language Control in Recognition: The Role of Language Dominance and Bilingual Experience

“…Therefore, in addition to language proficiency, language use preference, reflecting an individual’s attitude towards the actual use of each language, can be considered as a meaningful component of language dominance. This method of using language skill and use preference to measure language dominance has been performed in a previous study ( Wu and Struys, 2021 ). Language proficiency in the dominance measure was a self-evaluated score based on a scale from 0 to 10 for each language skill and for each language.…”

Language Change on Social Media

“…Studies have also explored the influence of language attitudes on language change, highlighting attitudes as catalysts for sound changes and community identity (COOPER & Fishman, 1974). Additionally, research indicates that language contact and sociolinguistic experiences can impact language control processes and language dominance in bilingual individuals (Wu & Struys, 2021).…”