The effects of habitual code-switching in bilingual language production on cognitive control

Abstract

AbstractThis study explored how bilingual code-switching habits affect cognitive shifting and inhibition. Habitual code-switching from 31 Mandarin–English bilingual adults were collected through the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (Anderson, Mak, Keyvani Chahi & Bialystok, 2018) and the Bilingual Switching Questionnaire (Rodriguez-Fornells, Krämer, Lorenzo-Seva, Festman & Münte, 2012). All participants performed verbal and nonverbal switching tasks, including the verbal fluency task, a bilingual picture-naming and colour-shape switching task. A Go/No-go task was administered to measure the inhibitory control of participants.Frequent bilingual switchers showed higher efficiency in both English to Chinese verbal switching and nonverbal cognitive shifting. Additionally, bilinguals with intensive dense code-switching experience outperformed in the Go/No-go task. In general, the study revealed the connections between bilinguals’ intensity of single-language context experience and goal maintenance efficiency, which partially supported the Adaptive Control Hypothesis’ prediction (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). Besides, it also indicated the facilitations of bilinguals’ dense code-switching experience on their conflicts monitoring and response inhibition.