Should I stay or should I switch? A cost-benefit analysis of voluntary language switching in young and aging bilinguals.

Full Abstract

Bilinguals spontaneously switch languages in conversation even though laboratory studies reveal robust cued language switching costs. The authors investigated how voluntary-switching costs might differ when switches are voluntary. Younger (Experiments 1-2) and older (Experiment 3) Spanish-English bilinguals named pictures in 3 conditions: (a) dominant-language only, (b) nondominant-language only, and (c) using "whatever language comes to mind" (in Experiment 2, "using each language about half the time"). Most bilinguals, particularly balanced bilinguals, voluntarily mixed languages even though switching was costly. Unlike with cued switching, voluntary switching sometimes facilitated responses, switch costs were not greater for the dominant language, and age effects on language mixing and switching were limited. This suggests that the freedom to mix languages voluntarily allows unbalanced and older bilinguals to function more like balanced and younger bilinguals. Voluntary switch costs reveal an expanded role for inhibitory control in bilingual language production and imply a mandatory separation by language in bilingual lexical selection. Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Author information

Author/s: Gollan, Tamar H (TH); Ferreira, Victor S (VS);

Affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0949, USA. tgollan(-atsign-)ucsd.edu

Grants: DC00191 (Agency:NIDCD NIH HHS) ; P50 AG05131 (Agency:NIA NIH HHS) ; R01 HD050287 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS) ; R01 HD051030 (Agency:NICHD NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-May; vol 35 (issue 3) : pp 640-65

Dates: Created 2009/04/21; Completed 2009/06/26;

PMID: 19379041, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/26/2009, IMS Date: 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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