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Are executive functions engaged in language switching? The role of language proficiency
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Poster C94 in Poster Session C, Wednesday, October 25, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Elisabet García González1, Sonja Lahdenranta2, Minna Lehtonen1,2; 1Center for Multilingualism Across the Lifespan (University of Oslo, Norway), 2Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology (University of Turku, Finland)
Bilingualism research has largely presumed that bilingual speakers engage domain-general control mechanisms in language control, here called the domain-generality account. This assumption is fundamental for the claim that bilinguals might train executive functions (EFs) by means of language switching. While some studies have found that general executive control is needed for language control such as in language switching, other research has found contrasting results. This conflicting evidence suggests that EFs might be engaged to some degree in language switching, but the circumstances under which this might occur are not clearly determined. In contraposition to the domain-generality account, recent research has suggested that experienced bilingual speakers may be able to automatize some of their language switching. This has been proposed in the “skill learning” account (Jylkkä 2017; 2020, Lehtonen et al., 2023), which assumes that EFs might be needed only when a particular task or behavior is new or unfamiliar, but that these become routinized with sufficient experience and then do not rely on domain-general EFs anymore. Thus, less experienced speakers, such as L2 learners with a lower proficiency, would be expected to exhibit stronger associations between EF and language switching performance compared to more experienced and highly-proficient bilinguals, who should be less likely to engage EFs for language control. This study tested this hypothesis in a group of Finnish-Swedish bilinguals with different proficiency levels and bilingual experience. The participants (N= 86) were divided into three groups: an early bilingual group that had acquired both languages in childhood, an L2 group with high proficiency in Swedish, and an L2 group with lower proficiency in Swedish. The L2 groups had started learning Swedish in late childhood or adolescence. All participants completed an online experiment that included a Finnish-Swedish cued naming (CN) task with language switching, a Simon task measuring inhibitory control, a Swedish vocabulary test, and a language background questionnaire. In line with the predictions of the skill learning hypothesis, our results revealed that L2 proficiency modulates the relationship between EFs and language switching. Specifically, the Simon effect did not predict switching or mixing costs in the early bilingual and high proficient L2 group, but it was a significant predictor for CN switching in the lower proficiency L2 group. Given the comparable outcomes between early bilinguals and the high proficient L2 group, our results suggest that language proficiency might be a more important factor than age of acquisition when it comes to relationship of EFs and language control, and that language control mechanisms might become automatized with sufficient language experience. These results contribute to the bilingual advantage debate as they challenge the domain-generality hypothesis, and by extension, the cognitive training hypothesis. If the engagement of EFs for language control is limited to a reduced group of speakers, the idea that all bilingualism could train domain-general cognitive processes needs to be reconsidered.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Multilingualism