Aparicio Xavier, Heidlmayr Karin, Isel Frédéric
Laboratory CHArt - EA 4004, Paris-Est Créteil University - ESPE, Créteil, France.
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
J Psycholinguist Res. 2017 Dec;46(6):1427-1451. doi: 10.1007/s10936-017-9501-3.
The present behavioral study aimed to examine the impact of language control expertise on two domain-general control processes, i.e. active inhibition of competing representations and overcoming of inhibition. We compared how Simultaneous Interpreters (SI) and Highly Proficient Bilinguals-two groups assumed to differ in language control capacity-performed executive tasks involving specific inhibition processes. In Experiment 1 (language decision task), both active and overcoming of inhibition processes are involved, while in Experiment 2 (bilingual Stroop task) only interference suppression is supposed to be required. The results of Experiment 1 showed a language switching effect only for the highly proficient bilinguals, potentially because overcoming of inhibition requires more cognitive resources than in SI. Nevertheless, both groups performed similarly on the Stroop task in Experiment 2, which suggests that active inhibition may work similarly in both groups. These contrasting results suggest that overcoming of inhibition may be harder to master than active inhibition. Taken together, these data indicate that some executive control processes may be less sensitive to the degree of expertise in bilingual language control than others. Our findings lend support to psycholinguistic models of bilingualism postulating a higher-order mechanism regulating language activation.
本行为学研究旨在考察语言控制能力对两种通用控制过程的影响，即对竞争表征的主动抑制和抑制的克服。我们比较了同声传译员（SI）和高度熟练的双语者——两组被认为在语言控制能力上存在差异——在涉及特定抑制过程的执行任务中的表现。在实验1（语言决策任务）中，涉及主动抑制和抑制的克服过程，而在实验2（双语斯特鲁普任务）中，仅需进行干扰抑制。实验1的结果表明，仅高度熟练的双语者存在语言切换效应，这可能是因为抑制的克服比同声传译员需要更多的认知资源。然而，两组在实验2的斯特鲁普任务中的表现相似，这表明主动抑制在两组中可能以相似的方式起作用。这些对比结果表明，抑制的克服可能比主动抑制更难掌握。综合来看，这些数据表明，一些执行控制过程可能比其他过程对双语语言控制的专业程度不太敏感。我们的研究结果支持了双语心理语言学模型，该模型假设存在一种调节语言激活的高阶机制。
