Different inhibitory control components predict different levels of language control in bilinguals

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Bilingual language control is influenced by executive functions (EFs).
• Few studies systematically examine how different EFs affect various levels of language control in bilinguals.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of two executive function components on different levels of bilingual language control.
• To differentiate the roles of interference suppression and response inhibition in language control.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments utilized a language-switching task to assess language control.
• Experiment 1 used the Simon task to measure interference suppression.
• Experiment 2 used a go/no-go task to measure response inhibition.

Main Results:

• Smaller Simon effects correlated with larger asymmetry in switch costs, indicating interference suppression aids local control.
• Shorter go response times correlated with larger global slowing effects, suggesting response inhibition impacts global control.

Conclusions:

• Interference suppression, a component of executive functions, facilitates local-level language control in bilinguals.
• Response inhibition, another executive function component, influences global-level language control in bilinguals.