Department of Psychology, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 W. University Ave, El Paso, TX, 79968, USA.
Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2023 Apr;30(2):774-791. doi: 10.3758/s13423-022-02168-z. Epub 2022 Sep 12.
Bilinguals need to control interference from the nontarget language, to avoid saying words in the wrong language. This study investigates how often bilinguals apply such control in a dual-language mode, when speaking one language after the other when the two languages cannot be used interchangeably: over and over (every time they say a word), or only once (the first time they use a word or language after a language switch). Three groups of Spanish-English bilinguals named pictures first in their dominant, then in their nondominant, and then again in their dominant language; a fourth control group of bilinguals named pictures in their dominant language throughout. The study targeted language control aftereffects on the dominant language after nondominant naming, typically assumed to reflect recovery from previously applied inhibition. If the dominant language is inhibited every time a nondominant word is produced, subsequent dominant-language naming latencies should increase in proportion to the number of pictures previously named in the nondominant language. We found, however, that the number of nondominant picture-naming trials did not affect subsequent naming latencies in the dominant language, despite ample statistical power to detect such effects if they existed. The results suggest that, in a dual-language mode, bilingual (inhibitory) control is applied over a word's translation upon the word's first mention but not over and over with subsequent repetitions. This conclusion holds true equally for inhibitory and non-inhibitory language control mechanisms.
双语者需要控制非目标语言的干扰，避免使用错误的语言。本研究调查了双语者在两种语言不能互换使用的情况下，以双语模式连续说话时（即每次说一个词时），或者仅在语言切换后第一次使用一个词或语言时（仅一次），会频繁地进行这种控制。三组西班牙语-英语双语者首先用他们的主导语言命名图片，然后用他们的非主导语言命名图片，最后再用他们的主导语言命名图片；第四组控制双语者在整个过程中都用他们的主导语言命名图片。该研究针对的是在非主导语言命名后对主导语言的语言控制后效，通常认为这反映了之前应用的抑制的恢复。如果每次说出一个非主导词时都抑制主导语言，那么随后主导语言命名的潜伏期应该与之前在非主导语言中命名的图片数量成比例增加。然而，我们发现，尽管有足够的统计能力来检测如果存在这种影响，非主导图片命名试验的数量并不影响主导语言中的后续命名潜伏期。结果表明，在双语模式下，双语（抑制）控制在一个词首次被提及时就针对该词的翻译进行应用，但不会在后续的重复中进行应用。这个结论同样适用于抑制性和非抑制性语言控制机制。
