Language control in regional dialect speakers – monolingual by name, bilingual by nature?

While research on bilingual language processing is sensitive to different usage contexts, monolinguals are still often treated as a homogeneous control group, despite frequently using multiple varieties that may require engagement of control mechanisms during lexical access. Adapting a language-switching task for speakers of (Scottish) Standard English and Orcadian Scots, we demonstrate switch cost asymmetries with longer naming latencies when switching back into Orcadian. This pattern, which is reminiscent of unbalanced bilinguals, suggests that Orcadian is the dominant variety of these participants – despite the fact they might be regarded as English monolinguals because of sociolinguistic factors. In conjunction with the observed mixing cost and cognate facilitation effect (indicative of proactive language control and parallel language activation, respectively), these findings show that ‘monolinguals’ need to be scrutinised for routine use of different varieties to gain a better understanding of whether and how mechanisms underlying their lexical access resemble those of bilinguals.

Cognitive and Neurolinguistic Aspects of Interpreting

Over the past decade, a large and growing body of literature has explored the cognitive and neural foundations of interpreting processes. The article explores the relevance of cognitive and neurolinguistic approaches to the process of both simultaneous and consecutive interpreting. The main objective is to reveal the interpreter’s status, his/her mental and linguistic operations as cognitive units in the approaches under review. Firstly, we discuss how both interpreting modes have been understood and defined by various researchers. Secondly, we present the overview of diverse research works on cognitive and neurolinguistic scientific approaches to interpretation, trying to understand and explain the operating of interpreters’ minds. Finally, we focus on the issues of bilingualism and its impact on language comprehension and its production. It has been revealed that interpreting contributes significantly to improving cognitive and neural functions of the brain. Interpreters have always been a key figure in facilitating and bridging communication across cultures and languages. They can input, retain, retrieve, and output data but are limited in processing capacity at any given time. Quite recently, scholars in both interpreting and neurolinguistics have attempted to provide insight into the organization of bilingual speakers’ minds. In interpreting and translation tasks, it has been complemented by research works into language control in a bilingual language mode, with both language systems being simultaneously activated. Taken together, the cognitive and neurolinguistic studies reviewed in the paper support strong recommendations to regard an interpreter as a conceptual mediator relying on both his/her decision-making and probability thinking mechanisms.

Language distance modulates cognitive control in bilinguals

Linguistic processes in the bilingual brain are partially shared across languages, and the degree of neural overlap between the languages is influenced by several factors, including the age of acquisition, relative language proficiency, and immersion. There is limited evidence on the role of linguistic distance on the performance of the language control as well as domain-general cognitive control systems. The present study aims at exploring whether being bilingual in close and distant language pairs (CLP and DLP) influences language control and domain-general cognitive processes. We recruited two groups of DLP (Persian–English) and CLP (French–English) bilinguals. Subjects performed language nonswitching and switching picture-naming tasks and a nonlinguistic switching task while EEG data were recorded. Behaviorally, CLP bilinguals showed a lower cognitive cost than DLP bilinguals, reflected in faster reaction times both in language switching (compared to nonswitching) and nonlinguistic switching. ERPs showed differential involvement of cognitive control regions between the CLP and DLP groups during linguistic switching vs. nonswitching at 450 to 515 ms poststimulus presentation. Moreover, there was a difference between CLP and DLP groups from 40 to 150 ms in the nonlinguistic task. Our electrophysiological results confirm a stronger involvement of language control and domain-general cognitive control regions in CLP bilinguals.

Language-switch costs from comprehension to production might just be task-switch costs

Spanish–English bilinguals switched between naming pictures in one language and either reading-aloud or semantically classifying written words in both languages. When switching between reading-aloud and picture-naming, bilinguals exhibited no language switch costs in picture-naming even though they produced overt language switches in speech. However, when switching between semantic classification and picture-naming, bilinguals, especially unbalanced bilinguals, exhibited switch costs in the dominant language and switch facilitation in the nondominant language even though they never switched languages overtly. These results reveal language switching across comprehension and production can be cost-free when the intention remains the same. Assuming switch costs at least partially reflect inhibition of the nontarget language, this implies such language control mechanisms are recruited only under demanding task conditions, especially for unbalanced bilinguals. These results provide striking demonstration of adaptive control mechanisms and call into question previous claims that language switch costs necessarily transfer from comprehension to production.

Bilingual Language Control Flexibly Adapts to Cultural Context

How does bilingual language control adapt to the cultural context? We address this question by looking at the pattern of switch cost and reversed language dominance effect, which are suggested to separately reflect reactive and proactive language control mechanisms, in the contexts with culturally-neutral pictures (i. e., baseline context) or culturally-biased pictures (i.e., congruent context where culture matched the language to be spoken or incongruent context where culture mismatched the language to be spoken). Results showed an asymmetric switch cost with larger costs for L2 in the congruent context as compared with the baseline and incongruent contexts, but the reversed language dominance effect was not changed across contexts, suggesting that cultural context plays a critical role in modulating reactive but not proactive language control. These findings reveal the dynamic nature of language control in bilinguals and have important implications for the current models of bilingual language control.

Do bilinguals outperform monolinguals in switching tasks? Contrary evidence for nonlinguistic and linguistic switching tasks

The benefits of bilingualism in executive functions are highly debated. Even so, in switching tasks, these effects seem robust, although smaller than initially thought (Gunnerud et al., 2020; Ware et al., 2020). By handling two languages throughout their lifespan, bilinguals appear to train their executive functions and show benefits in nonlinguistic switching tasks compared to monolinguals. Nevertheless, because bilinguals need to control for the interference of another language, they may show a disadvantage when dealing with task-switching paradigms requiring language control, particularly when those are performed in their less dominant language. The present work explored this issue by studying bilingualism’s effects on task-switching within the visual and language domains. On the one hand, our results show that bilinguals were overall faster and presented reduced switch costs compared to monolinguals when performing perceptual geometric judgments with no time for task preparation. On the other hand, no bilingual advantage was found when a new sample of comparable bilinguals and monolinguals completed a within-language switching task. Our results provide clear evidence favoring the bilingual advantage, yet only when the task imposes greater executive demands and does not involve language control.

Assessing the evidence for asymmetrical language switch costs and reversed language dominance effects - a meta analysis

Two seemingly counterintuitive phenomena – asymmetrical language switch costs and the reversed language dominance effect – prove to be particularly controversial in the literature on language control. Asymmetrical language switch costs refer to the larger costs for switching into the dominant language compared to switching into the less dominant language, both relative to staying in either one language. The reversed language dominance effect refers to longer reaction times when in the more dominant of the two languages in situations that require frequent language switching (i.e., mixed-language blocks). The asymmetrical language switch costs are commonly taken as an index for processes of transient, reactive inhibitory language control, whereas the reversed language dominance effect is taken as an index for sustained, proactive inhibitory language control. In the present meta-analysis, we set out to establish the empirical evidence for these two phenomena using a Bayesian linear mixed effects modelling approach. Despite the observation of both phenomena in some studies, our results suggest that overall, there is little evidence for the generality and robustness of these two effects, and this holds true even when conditions – such as language proficiency and preparation time manipulations – were included as moderators of these phenomena. We conclude that asymmetrical switch costs and the reversed language dominance effect are important for theory development, but their utility for theory testing is limited due to their lack of robustness and the absence of confirmed moderatory variables.