Citation

Adler RM, Valdés Kroff JR, Novick JM. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 2019; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Affiliation

Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/xlm0000755

PMID

31448933

Abstract

We investigated whether bilinguals' integration of a code-switch during real-time comprehension, which involves resolving among conflicting linguistic representations, modulates the deployment of cognitive-control mechanisms. In the current experiment, Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 48) completed a cross-task conflict-adaptation paradigm that tested whether reading code-switched sentences triggers cognitive-control engagement that immediately influences performance on an ensuing Flanker trial. We observed that, while incrementally processing sentences, detecting a code-switch (as opposed to reading sentences that did not contain a code-switch) assisted subsequent conflict resolution. Such temporal interdependence between confronting cross-linguistic conflict and ensuing adjustments in behavior indicates that integrating a code-switch during online comprehension may recruit domain-general cognitive-control procedures. We propose that such control mechanisms mobilize to resolve among competing representations that arise across languages during real-time parsing of code-switched input. Overall, the findings provide novel insight into what language-processing demands of bilingualism regulate cognitive-control performance moment by moment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en