Parallel language activation and cognitive control during spoken word recognition in bilinguals

Abstract

Accounts of bilingual cognitive advantages suggest an associative link between cross-linguistic competition and inhibitory control. We investigate this link by examining English-Spanish bilinguals’ parallel language activation during auditory word recognition and nonlinguistic Stroop performance. Thirty-one English-Spanish bilinguals and 30 English monolinguals participated in an eye-tracking study. Participants heard words in English (e.g., comb) and identified corresponding pictures from a display that included pictures of a Spanish competitor (e.g., conejo, English rabbit). Bilinguals with higher Spanish proficiency showed more parallel language activation and smaller Stroop effects than bilinguals with lower Spanish proficiency. Across all bilinguals, stronger parallel language activation between 300–500ms after word onset was associated with smaller Stroop effects; between 633–767ms, reduced parallel language activation was associated with smaller Stroop effects. Results suggest that bilinguals who perform well on the Stroop task show increased cross-linguistic competitor activation during early stages of word recognition and decreased competitor activation during later stages of word recognition. Findings support the hypothesis that cross-linguistic competition impacts domain-general inhibition.

Parallel language activation and inhibitory control in bimodal bilinguals

“…For bilingual listeners, auditory input in one language activates possible word candidates regardless of language membership (e.g., Marian & Spivey, 2003a, 2003b). This input-driven language co-activation is observed across different proficiency levels, ages of onset of language acquisition, and highly diverse language pairs (e.g., Blumenfeld & Marian, 2007, 2013; Canseco-Gonzalez et al, 2010; Cutler, Weber, & Otake, 2006; Ju & Luce, 2004; Marian, Blumenfeld, & Boukrina, 2008; Weber & Cutler, 2004). Resolving such cross-linguistic competition has been posited to require cognitive inhibition skills (e.g., Green, 1998; Shook & Marian, 2013).…”

“…Mercier, Pivneva, & Titone, 2014). In a more recent study, Blumenfeld and Marian (2013) showed that efficient conflict resolution was indeed associated with how unimodal bilinguals manage between-language activation during auditory word recognition (also see Mercier et al, 2014). For Spanish-English bilinguals, better performance on a nonlinguistic spatial Stroop task was associated with increased cross-linguistic activation during the early stages of word recognition (300-500 ms after word-onset) and decreased cross-linguistic activation during later stages of word recognition (633-767 ms after word-onset).…”

“…One possible explanation for these advantages is that bilinguals engage domain-general cognitive control mechanisms to manage the cognitive demands of bilingual language processing (e.g., Blumenfeld & Marian, 2011; Linck, Schwieter, & Sunderman, 2012; Pivneva, Palmer, & Titone, 2012; Prior & Gollan, 2011; Soveri, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Laine, 2011). Over time, growing experience with managing these demands might enhance nonlinguistic cognitive control abilities (e.g., Blumenfeld & Marian, 2013; Luk et al, 2011; Singh & Mishra, 2012). …”

Individual differences in L2 acquisition of English phonology: The relation between cognitive abilities and phonological processing

“…Extensive research has been conducted about some of the factors underlying individual differences among L2 learners (Dörnyei, 2005). Among them, cognitive variables such as working memory (Miyake & Friedman, 1998), attention (Segalowitz & Frenkiel-Fishman, 2005), inhibitory control (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2013;Mercier, Pivneva, & Titone, 2013), vocabulary size (Majerus, Poncelet, Van der Linden, & Weekes, 2008), and processing speed (Golestani, Molko, Dehaene, LeBihan, & Pallier, 2007) have been associated with higher L2 proficiency and more efficient L2 processing (see also Costa & Santesteban, 2004;Festman, Rodriguez-Fornells, & Münte, 2010;Rodriguez-Fornells, Balaguer, & Münte, 2006).…”

Language Control and Code-switching

“…However, are variations in levels of activation a sufficient mechanism to account for the pattern of language use in the corpus data? Experimental evidence indicates that even when only one language is in play, lexical representations and grammatical constructions are active in the other language and lexical representations reach to the level of phonological form (e.g., (Blumenfeld and Marian 2013;Christoffels et al 2007;Costa et al 2000;Hoshino and Thierry 2011;Kroll et al 2015) for a review). Given the corpus data cited above, top-down processes of control must allow speakers to produce words and constructions in just one language in a code-switching context despite parallel activation of words and constructions in the other language (for further discussion of bottom-up and top-down processes of language control, see (Kleinman and Gollan 2016;Morales et al 2013)).…”