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Investigations into the locus of language-switching costs in older adult bilinguals*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 November 2013

ARTURO E. HERNANDEZ  and
KATHRYN J. KOHNERT
ARTURO E. HERNANDEZ*
Affiliation:
University of Houston
KATHRYN J. KOHNERT
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
*
Address for correspondence: Arturo E. Hernandez, Department of Psychology, University of Houston, Houston, TX, 77204, USA. aehernandez@uh.edu
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Abstract

Language switching was studied with older adult (age 65 years and older) and young adult (18–24 years) bilinguals in a blocked-language or mixed-language condition. Results revealed small differences in reaction time (RT) between older adults and college-age participants in the blocked condition. However, older adults showed much slower RTs in the mixed condition which involves sustained switching relative to young adults. In Experiment 2, the same design was used except that participants were asked to translate an auditory word. In this condition, older adults showed a slowing effect but to a much lesser degree. Furthermore, comparisons within the mixed condition (transient switching) revealed that switching costs varied across languages and age groups. The results from the picture-naming task are consistent with models that predict deficiencies in task-set shifting in older adults especially when a stimulus activates multiple responses. Furthermore, the results indicate interesting differences in sustained and transient switching depending on the task.

Keywords

bilingualismagingcognitive controllanguage switching
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 51 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

Support for this research was provided by the grants entitled “Cross-linguistic studies in aphasia” (NIH/NIDCD Grant #2-RO1-DC00216-11), “Aging and bilingualism” (NIH/NIA Grant # 5-R01-AG13474-03) and “Neural correlates of lexical processing in child L2 learners” (NIH/NICHD Grant #1-R21-HD059103-02). We would like to thank Armando Chavez, Eloisa Falcon and Eugenia Gurrola for their assistance in data collection, and Ronald Figueroa and Kain Sosa for technical support. Finally, we would like to thank Elizabeth Bates and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

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