The sensitivity to context modulates executive control: Evidence from Malayalam–English bilinguals

Abstract

In two experiments, we examined the hypothesis that bilingual speakers modulate their cognitive control settings dynamically in the presence of different interlocutors, and this can be captured through performance on a non-linguistic attention task. We introduced Malayalam–English bilinguals to interlocutors with varying L2 dominance through a pre-experiment familiarisation and interaction phase. Later, participants did the Flanker task while the interlocutors appeared before each trial. While in experiment one participants did the Flanker task with equal distribution of trials, in experiment two we manipulated the monitoring demands by changing the frequency of trials. Results showed that high-L2 proficient bilinguals had lower conflict effect on the Flanker task in the presence of balanced interlocutors in both the experiments. The results provide strong evidence of dynamic adaptation of control settings in bilinguals with regard to different passively present interlocutors. The results further extend the predictions of the adaptive control hypothesis with novel manipulation.

Bilingual Language Control Flexibly Adapts to Cultural Context

“…The findings in the present study supported and expanded the adaptive control hypothesis (Green and Abutalebi, 2013), which proposed that linguistic interactional contexts (i.e., singlelanguage context, dual-language context, and dense codeswitching context) place a different level of demand on the cognitive systems and adaptively alter their language control (see Timmer et al, 2019a,b;Liu et al, 2020Liu et al, , 2021 and cognitive control processes (see Lai and O'Brien, 2020;Rafeekh and Mishra, 2021). The present study examined how nonlinguistic cultural context shapes language control in bilinguals and found different patterns of language switch cost across contexts, suggesting that non-linguistic interactional contexts could shape the reactive language control processing.…”

Language contexts induced by the interlocutors’ proficiencies modulate bilingual language monitoring

“…Furthermore, low-L2 proficient speakers use their native language to communicate with other low-L2 proficient speakers. These findings align with the schematic model of bilingual empirical connections by Rafeekh and Mishra (2021).…”

“…In Block 3, interlocutors were presented an equal number of times. Previous research on bilingual proficiency and executive function indicates that high-L2 proficient participants can efficiently co-activate both languages, enabling them to employ higher executive control in high monitoring conditions than low-L2 proficient participants (Rafeekh & Mishra, 2021). The lexical representation in English and Telugu is higher in high-L2 proficient participants, so they can anticipate using any language during dynamic contexts such as mixed block.…”