Domain-general language control: Evidence from the switching paradigm

ended

One of the major discussions in the bilingual literature revolves around whether language control, a process that restricts bilingual language processing to the target language, is domain general. Due to conflicting evidence in the literature, the general assumption is that language control is partially domain general. However, little to no research has examined what that means exactly: Which of the mechanisms underlying language control are domain general? Which functional processing stage(s) are characterized by shared control processes? These two questions will be investigated in the current project by comparing language control against control processes in progressively more dissimilar contexts across four behavioral and two event-related potential experiments. More specifically, control processes will be compared in similar contexts (unimodal vs. bimodal bilingual language control), different contexts within the same domain (bilingual language control vs. monolingual control), and between domains (bilingual language control vs. non-linguistic executive control). This will allow for an investigation of domain generality across an array of contexts and allow us to examine whether a closer relationship in context leads to more similar control processes. More generally, this project will outline the specific ways in which language control is domain general or not.