Voluntary language switching in English–Spanish bilingual children

Abstract

Although bilingual children frequently switch between languages, the psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the emerging ability to control language choice are unknown. We examined the mechanisms of voluntary language switching in English–Spanish bilingual children during a picture-naming task under two conditions: (1) single-language naming in English and in Spanish; (2) either-language naming, when the children could use whichever language they wanted. The mechanism of inhibitory control was examined by analysing local switching costs and global mixing costs. The mechanism of lexical accessibility was examined by analysing the properties of the items children chose to name in their non-dominant language. The children exhibited significant switching costs across both languages and asymmetrical mixing costs; they also switched into their non-dominant language most frequently on highly accessible items. These findings suggest that both lexical accessibility and inhibition contribute to language choice during voluntary language switching in children.

Keywords:

• Bilingualism
• Children
• Language control
• Language switching
• Lexical accessibility
• Voluntary switching

Notes

¹ It is difficult to determine language dominance in bilingual children because their skills in each language are still developing and the relative dominance of one language over another varies over time and across skill areas (Kohnert, 2010). While the expressive vocabulary scores of these four children make them appear to have relatively balanced skills, excluding them from the analysis did not change the general pattern of results in terms of the symmetry of switching costs and mixing costs. Therefore, the results reported here reflect the data from all 31 children who switched enough to provide data in all conditions, recognising that these children represent a broad range of bilingual experiences.

² The pattern of results for the accuracy analyses did not change when the two children with outlying RTs were excluded.