How do highly proficient bilinguals control their lexicalization process? Inhibitory and language-specific selection mechanisms are both functional.
The authors report 4 experiments exploring the language-switching performance of highly proficient bilinguals in a picture-naming task. In Experiment 1, they tested the impact of language similarity and age of 2nd language acquisition on the language-switching performance of highly proficient bilinguals. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 assessed the performance of highly proficient bilinguals in language-switching contexts involving (a) the 2nd language (L2) and the L3 of the bilinguals, (b) the L3 and the L4, and (c) the L1 and a recently learned new language. Highly proficient bilinguals showed symmetrical switching costs regardless of the age at which the L2 was learned and of the similarities of the 2 languages and asymmetrical switching costs when 1 of the languages involved in the switching task was very weak (an L4 or a recently learned language). The theoretical implications of these results for the attentional mechanisms used by highly proficient bilinguals to control their lexicalization process are discussed.
Costa
Albert
A
Grup de Recerca en Neurociencia Cognitiva, Parc Cientific de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. acosta@ub.edu
Santesteban
Mikel
M
Ivanova
Iva
I
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D019303:Multilingualism; D011930:Reaction Time; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*