Is there proactive inhibitory control during bilingual and bidialectal language production?

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 16; no. 9; p. e0257355
• Main Authors: Declerck, Mathieu, Özbakar, Elisabeth, Kirk, Neil W
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 14.09.2021; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Analysis; Bilingual education; Bilingualism; Biology and Life Sciences; Computational linguistics; Control; Experiments; Female; Humans; Inhibition, Psychological; Interference; Language; Language processing; Male; Medicine and Health Sciences; Multilingualism; Names; Natural language interfaces; People and Places; Proactive Inhibition; Research and Analysis Methods; Social Sciences; Speech; Vocabulary; United Kingdom; Belgium
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257355

The bilingual language control literature generally assumes that cross-language interference resolution relies on inhibition of the non-target language. A similar approach has been taken in the bidialectal language control literature. However, there is little evidence along these lines for proactive language control, which entails a control process that is implemented as an anticipation of any cross-language interference. To further investigate the possibility of proactive inhibitory control, we examined the effect of language variety preparation time, by manipulating the cue-to-stimulus interval, on parallel language activation, by manipulating cognate status. If proactive language control relies on inhibition, one would expect less parallel language activation (i.e., a smaller cognate facilitation effect) with increased proactive inhibitory control (i.e., a long cue-to-stimulus interval). This was not the case with either bilinguals or bidialectals. So, the current study does not provide evidence for proactive inhibitory control during bilingual and bidialectal language production.