Language switching in bilingual production

One key issue in bilingualism is how bilinguals control production, particularly to produce words in the less dominant language. Language switching is one method to investigate control processes. Language switching has been much studied in comprehension, e.g., in lexical decision task, but less so in production. Here we first present a study of language switching in Italian-English adult bilinguals in a naming task for visually presented words. We demonstrate an asymmetric pattern of time costs to switch language, where participants incurred a greater time cost to switch into naming in their more dominant language (Italian). In addition, costs were greater where the stimuli were interlingual cognates or homographs than words existing in only one language, implicating lexical competition as a source of the cost. To clarify the operation of control processes, we then present two connectionist models of bilingual naming, based on the models acquired their differential language dominance via an experience-dependent learning process. The models embody different assumptions about the language control processes that produce the switch cost. We consider which processing assumptions are sufficient to explain asymmetric language switch costs and word/class effects on language switching in individual word reading, as well as generating novel predictions for future testing.