title: Electrophysiological evidence for domain-general inhibitory control during bilingual language switching.
abstract: This paper presents an experiment that explored the role of domain-general inhibitory control on language switching. Reaction times (RTs) and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded when low-proficient bilinguals with high and low inhibitory control (IC) switched between overt picture naming in both their L1 and L2. Results showed that the language switch costs of bilinguals with high-IC were symmetrical, while that of bilinguals with low-IC were not. The N2 component failed to show a significant interaction between group, language and task, indicating that inhibition may not comes into play during the language task schema competition phase. The late positive component (LPC), however, showed larger amplitudes for L2 repeat and switch trials than for L1 trials in the high-IC group, indicating that inhibition may play a key role during the lexical response selection phase. These findings suggest that domain-general inhibitory control plays an important role in modulating language switch costs and its influence can be specified in lexical selection phase.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Huanhuan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Psychology, Innsbruck Medical University, Innsbruck, Austria; Department of Neurology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Sonja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Huixia
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Baoguo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001519:Behavior; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult