Language proficiency moderates switch cost asymmetry, but highly proficient bilinguals still show n-2 language repetition costs consistent with inhibition¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r3 · q2
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Highly proficient bilinguals show symmetrical switch costs while second language learners show asymmetrical switch costs. → Mathieu Declerck & Andrea M. Philipp 2015 q2 i? Highly proficient Turkish-German bilinguals showed n-2 language repetition costs, in line with persisting reactive inhibition and against models assuming no inhibition for this group. → Mathieu Declerck & Andrea M. Philipp 2015 (2)

Evidence¶

Mathieu Declerck & Andrea M. Philipp 2015¶

Mathieu Declerck & Andrea M. Philipp. (2015). A review of control processes and their locus in language switching. Psychon Bull Rev. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0836-1

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review reports, citing Meuter and Allport (1999), that "the highly proficient group revealed symmetrical switch costs and the second language learners revealed asymmetrical switch costs," with converging evidence from Filippi et al. and Schwieter and Sunderman on proficiency correlations and thresholds. No effect sizes are printed.

"Their results indicated that asymmetrical switch costs are indeed dependent on language proficiency, since the highly proficient group revealed symmetrical switch costs and the second language learners revealed asymmetrical switch costs."

Mathieu Declerck & Andrea M. Philipp 2015 (2)¶

Mathieu Declerck & Andrea M. Philipp. (2015). A review of control processes and their locus in language switching. Psychon Bull Rev. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-015-0836-1

q2 · i? · review · r3

The review reports, citing Declerck, Thoma, et al. (2015c), that highly proficient Turkish-German bilinguals showed symmetrical switch costs and n-2 language repetition costs, with larger n-2 costs for Turkish and German than English. The review states these results are "completely in line with the notion of persisting, reactive inhibition."

"These results are completely in line with the notion of persisting, reactive inhibition (e.g., Green, 1998). They are not, however, in line with models that assume that highly proficient bilinguals implement no inhibition."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Higher Spanish proficiency in bilinguals is associated with less residual competitor inhibition
• Switch costs and mixing costs are common empirical observations across language switching paradigms, except voluntary switching under certain circumstances
• Asymmetrical switch costs are not an unambiguous marker of inhibition: they depend on task type and bilingual profile, and admit non-inhibitory explanations — related
• Sentence-level (lemma) processing affects language switching: switch costs occur between sentences and depend on syntactic structure — related
• N-2 language repetition costs are a less ambiguous marker of inhibition in language switching, though their pattern across languages is inconsistent — related