Abstract
Bilingualism leads to significant adaptation of the neural mechanisms of selective attention. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what the key factors that influence this adaptation are. The degree of usage of multiple languages has been shown to modulate cognitive control processes and language-related brain activity, and we therefore predict that L2 usage will have a significant impact on bilinguals’ selective attention processes.
The other key question concerns the dynamics of this adaptation. The degree of bilingual adaptation of selective attention is expected to depend on bilinguals’ language experience, and therefore might no longer be observed in bilinguals who stopped using their L2 actively.
Forty-six English-French bilinguals took part in an EEG experiment. There all started learning L2 (French) by age 8 and were all highly proficient, but differed in their L2 usage to create 3 groups: High-usage, Low-usage, and No-usage. Participants engaged in a dichotic-listening task, attending to narratives in their L1 or L2 while dealing with linguistic or acoustic interference in the unattended stream.
We predict that High-usage bilinguals will exhibit robust selective attention adaptation, with less susceptibility to interference. This effect should be less pronounced in Low-usage bilinguals, emphasizing the role of language usage. No-usage bilinguals may resemble monolinguals in their response to interference, suggesting that bilingual adaptations are not static.
Our preliminary EEG analysis will be presented at the symposium. This research sheds light on how bilingual experiences shape the neural mechanisms of selective attention, offering insights into the dynamic nature of neuroplastic changes in the bilingual brain.