Can monolinguals be like bilinguals? Evidence from dialect switching

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Sociolinguistics

Background:

• Bilinguals utilize cognitive control to manage lexical access and inhibit non-target languages.
• Bidialectals, speakers of two dialects of the same language, may also employ similar control mechanisms.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether cognitive control mechanisms observed in bilinguals are also present in bidialectals.
• To compare control mechanisms in native bidialectals with those in monodialectal speakers trained on a new dialect.

Main Methods:

• A dialect-switching task was administered to native German-Öcher Platt bidialectals and native English-Dundonian Scots bidialectals.
• Naming latencies were measured for switch and non-switch trials, and for cognate versus non-cognate nouns.
• Monodialectal English speakers trained on Dundonian Scots performed the same task to assess asymmetrical switch costs.

Main Results:

• Bidialectals exhibited symmetrical switch costs, irrespective of active dialect use.
• Switch costs were lower for cognate nouns compared to non-cognate nouns.
• Trained monodialectal speakers showed asymmetrical switch costs, with slower switching back to Standard English.

Conclusions:

• Bidialectals employ cognitive control mechanisms analogous to those in bilinguals.
• The findings suggest that dialect switching recruits similar control processes as language switching in bilinguals.
• Monodialectal speakers trained on a new dialect demonstrate control patterns comparable to unbalanced bilinguals.