Department of Psychology, University of York, York, YO10 5DD, UK.
Hull York Medical School, University of York, York, UK.
Sci Rep. 2023 Oct 5;13(1):16740. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-43886-1.
Word retrieval during language production slows down with age. However, bilinguals also require language control to manage language competition, in particular when switching languages to cues. The current study examined how this bilingual language control differs between younger and older adults. It also compared bilingual control, and age-group differences, to control that might be applied when alternating between responses within one language. In Experiment 1, 40 younger and 40 older monolingual adults completed a task alternating between noun and verb responses to pictures. The task showed costs associated with language control but these did not differ between age groups. Experiment 2 was completed by 50 older and 50 younger bilingual adults. Older adults showed larger switching costs than younger adults when switching between and within languages, suggesting they experienced more difficulty with reactive control. However, while older adults showed larger mixing costs than younger adults when using two languages in the dual-language environment relative to the single-language environment, they surprisingly showed smaller mixing costs than younger adults in the noun-verb within-language naming task. These findings show that language control, and the way it differs between older and younger adults, is not the same across within- and bilingual-language competition.
在语言产生过程中，单词检索随着年龄的增长而减慢。然而，双语者也需要语言控制来管理语言竞争，特别是在根据提示切换语言时。本研究考察了这种双语语言控制在年轻和老年成年人之间的差异。它还比较了双语控制以及年龄组差异与在一种语言内交替响应时可能应用的控制。在实验 1 中，40 名年轻和 40 名年长的单语成年人完成了一项任务，该任务在图片的名词和动词之间交替反应。该任务显示了与语言控制相关的成本，但这些成本在年龄组之间没有差异。实验 2 由 50 名年长和 50 名年轻的双语成年人完成。与在单语环境中相比，当在双语环境中切换语言时，年长的成年人比年轻的成年人表现出更大的转换成本，这表明他们在反应性控制方面遇到了更大的困难。然而，尽管与在单语环境中相比，年长的成年人在双语环境中使用两种语言时表现出更大的混合成本，但他们在名词-动词内的单语命名任务中表现出的混合成本比年轻的成年人小。这些发现表明，语言控制以及它在年轻和年长成年人之间的差异，在双语和单语竞争之间并不相同。
