Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.
Cognition. 2019 Jan;182:14-24. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.09.001. Epub 2018 Sep 11.
What is the relationship between bilingual language control (BLC) mechanisms and domain-general executive control (EC) processes? Do these two domains share some of their mechanisms? Here, we take a novel approach to this question, investigating whether short-term language switching training improves non-linguistic task switching performance. Two groups of bilinguals were assigned to two different protocols; one group was trained in language switching (switching-task training group) another group was trained in blocked language picture naming (single-block training group). Both groups performed a non-linguistic and linguistic switching task before (pre-training) and after training (post-training). Non-linguistic and linguistic switch costs decreased to a greater extent for the switching-task training than for the single-block training group from pre- to post-training. In contrast, mixing costs showed similar reductions for both groups. This suggests short-term language switching training can transfer to the non-linguistic domain for certain sub-mechanisms (i.e., switch cost). Thus, there is some overlap of the control mechanisms across domains.
双语语言控制（BLC）机制与领域一般性执行控制（EC）过程之间存在什么关系？这两个领域是否共享某些机制？在这里，我们采用一种新方法来研究这个问题，考察短期语言切换训练是否能提高非语言任务切换性能。两组双语者被分配到两种不同的方案中；一组接受语言切换训练（切换任务训练组），另一组接受语言图片命名的单一阻断训练（单一阻断训练组）。两组在训练前（预训练）和训练后（后训练）都进行了非语言和语言切换任务。从预训练到后训练，切换任务训练组的非语言和语言切换成本比单一阻断训练组下降得更多。相比之下，两组的混合成本都有类似的降低。这表明短期语言切换训练可以在某些子机制（即切换成本）上转移到非语言领域。因此，两个领域的控制机制存在一定的重叠。
