Speaking one's second language under time pressure: an ERP study on verbal self-monitoring in German-Dutch bilinguals

This study addresses how verbal self-monitoring and the Error-Related Negativity (ERN) are affected by time pressure when a task is performed in a second language as opposed to performance in the native language. German-Dutch bilinguals were required to perform a phoneme-monitoring task in Dutch with and without a time pressure manipulation. We obtained an ERN following verbal errors that showed an atypical increase in amplitude under time pressure. This finding is taken to suggest that under time pressure participants had more interference from their native language, which in turn led to a greater response conflict and thus enhancement of the amplitude of the ERN. This result demonstrates once more that the ERN is sensitive to psycholinguistic manipulations and suggests that the functioning of the verbal self-monitoring system during speaking is comparable to other performance monitoring, such as action monitoring.