Does language switching behavior rely on general executive functions?

Abstract

The assumption that everyday language switching trains bilinguals’ executive functions (EF) presupposes that language switching engages domain-general EF. This study examined associations between three types of tasks in a group of Finnish-English late bilinguals: everyday language switching frequency assessed with Ecological Momentary Assessment, language switching performance on a cued bilingual naming task, and EF as measured with Simon, Flanker, and Number-letter tasks. Cued switching performance showed mainly positive associations with EF performance, but the associations between everyday language switching and cued switching performance, and between everyday switching and the EF tasks were largely against our hypotheses. The findings indicate that participants with lower monitoring capacity make more everyday language switches. This speaks against the idea that everyday language switching would facilitate executive functioning. The results suggest that associations between language switching and general EF are more complex than current models assume.

Second Language Proficiency Modulates the Dependency of Bilingual Language Control on Domain-General Cognitive Control

“…For example, in highly proficient bilinguals, Prior and Gollan (2013) revealed a significant correlation between performances of language and non-verbal switching tasks only in mixing costs but not in switching costs. Similar correlational results were also reported in subsequent studies with highly proficient bilinguals (Timmer et al, 2019;Jylkkä et al, 2020). The results found in the present study confirmed the dependency of global language control on the domain-general cognitive control in Chinese-English bilinguals with relatively high proficiency in English.…”

“…In the low-proficiency group, we found that the switching cost was positively predicted by the Simon score. Previous studies also reported significant correlations between language switching costs and performances of bilinguals in tasks of cognitive control (Linck et al, 2012;Jylkkä et al, 2018Jylkkä et al, , 2020Timmer et al, 2018;. For example, Linck et al (2012) recruited participants to perform language switching tasks among their dominant English, the less proficient French, and the least proficient Spanish.…”

“…Considering the existence of global and local language controls, some researchers have been focusing on the relationship between cognitive control and language controls at different levels (Prior and Gollan, 2013;Jylkkä et al, 2018Jylkkä et al, , 2020Segal et al, 2019).…”

“…Furthermore, a significant correlation between performances of the language and non-verbal switching tasks was found only in the mixing cost but not in the switching cost. Jylkkä et al (2018Jylkkä et al ( , 2020 adopted multiple tasks of cognitive control to predict performances of bilingual language control indexed by the switching cost and mixing cost. Due to the different aspects of cognitive control measured in tasks of cognitive control (e.g., Simon task, Flanker task, etc.…”

Empirical investigation of the relationship between bilingualism and social flexibility

“…Furthermore, the hypothesis that code-switching is an underlying mechanism that could lead to enhanced social flexibility was not confirmed. This is in line with new research by Jylkkä et al (2020) showing that frequent code-switching in daily life is associated with lower monitoring skills. Based on this, a positive effect of frequency of codeswitching on social flexibility would actually have been surprising.…”