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Examining Bilingual Language Control Using the Stroop Task
Published on: February 26, 2020
Attentional inhibition in bilingual naming performance: evidence from delta-plot analyses
Ardi Roelofs1, Vitória Piai, Gabriela Garrido Rodriguez
1Donders Centre for Cognition, Radboud University Nijmegen Nijmegen, Netherlands.
Frontiers in Psychology
|September 3, 2011
Summary
Inhibition plays a key role in bilingual language control, with its effects most pronounced in the tail of response time (RT) distributions. This domain-general mechanism is optionally engaged based on circumstances.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Inhibition is theorized as a crucial attentional control mechanism in bilingual language processing.
- Inhibition's impact is observed to be largest in the tail of response time (RT) distributions in monolingual and non-linguistic tasks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the role and distribution of inhibition in bilingual language performance.
- To determine if inhibition effects in bilinguals are largest in the tail of the RT distribution, similar to other domains.
Main Methods:
- Delta-plot analyses were conducted on naming reaction times (RTs) of Dutch-English bilingual speakers.
- Participants named pictures in English while ignoring neutral or semantically related/unrelated/translation Dutch distractor words.
Main Results:
- Mean RTs showed semantic, translation, and lexicality effects.
- Delta plots indicated that inhibition effects were largest in the tail of the RT distribution, especially when the mean distractor effect was smaller.
- Higher proficiency bilinguals appeared to engage inhibition more in the unrelated distractor condition compared to others.
Conclusions:
- The findings support inhibition as a domain-general mechanism in bilingual language control.
- Inhibition's engagement is flexible and context-dependent, varying with proficiency and distractor type.
