Examining sources of language production switch costs amongst Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals

ABSTRACT

The present study tested whether the switch costs of production-based language switching tasks by trilinguals are due to competition from outside language schemas or from within language systems. We recruited 90 Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals in 10th grade in a Tibetan middle school in China to name digits and number words using different stimuli valence. The study was divided into three experiments, one for each combination of two languages possible amongst Tibetan, Chinese and English. We observed the switch cost symmetrical patterns in the three experiments. The results suggest that the sources of switch cost are partially from outside competition between language schemas and partially from within language system. These results may contribute to our understanding of the language control mechanism between production-based and comprehension-based language switching tasks and language control mechanism of trilinguals with three orthographically different languages.

KEYWORDS:

• Language switching costs asymmetry
• Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals
• stimuli valence
• language production

Acknowledgements

We thank all the participants who took part in the experiments.

Data availability statement

The data of the present research is available at: 10.6084/m9.figshare.22633525

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Note that some studies (i.e., Gade et al. 2021) suggested that asymmetrical switch costs is currently not the sole index of inhibition language control.

2 A trial requiring participants to name the stimulus with the same language as the previous trial is called a repetition trial and a trial requiring participants use a different language from the previous one is called a switch trial.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Item No. 21lzujbkyjh001). China's National Fundation for Social Science (No. 23BYY142).

Notes on contributors

Jianlin Chen

Jianlin Chen is a professor at Lanzhou University in China. He obtained his PhD in English Language and Literature from Shanghai International Studies University and a PhD in Linguistics from KU Leuven. His research interests include bilingualism, second language acquisition, teaching and testing.

Yu Liu

Yu Liu is currently a Master's student at Lanzhou University.

Yanyan Xiong

Yanyan Xiong used to be a Master's student as Lanzhou University.

Min He

Min He is currently an associate professor at Lanzhou University. He obtained his PhD in English Language and Literature from Shanghai International Studies University. His research interests include bilingualism and translation studies.