Language choice and naming difficulty: Evidence from bilingual degraded picture naming

We investigated how anticipated naming difficulty affects voluntary language choice and switching behavior in three experiments. L2 speakers of English (E1: 87 native Dutch speakers, E2: 105 native Dutch speakers, and E3: 65 native Indonesian speakers) performed an online picture-naming task with free language choice. We used image degradation to manipulate the early, prelexical stages of word production to be easy (intact image) or difficult (degraded image). In Experiment 2, we also manipulated word frequency. We hypothesized participants would use English (their nondominant language) and switch languages less on degraded- versus intact-image trials. Participants took longer to name degraded than intact images and lower than higher frequency words, as predicted. They also responded faster on English trials (reverse dominance effect) and language repeat trials (voluntary switch cost) and used English more for higher than lower frequency words (all ps < .001). Crucially, though, results refuted our other predictions: There was no effect of image degradation on language choice or switch choice (p > .05). This suggests that early prelexical sources of naming difficulty do not affect voluntary language selection. These data support modular theories of language production, meaning language decisions at the lexical stage occur independently from the visual processing or conceptual stages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).