Calabria, M. 1 , Hernàndez, M. 2 , Marne, P. 1 , Juncadella, M. 3 , Reñé , R. 3 , Ortiz-Gil , J. 4 , Ugas, L. 4 , Lleó, A. 5 , Blesa, R. 5 & Costa, A. 1, 6
1 Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
2 Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC), University of Trento, Trento, Italy
3 Unitat de Diagnòstic i Tractament de Demències, Servei de Neurologia de l’Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge, Spain
4 Hospital General de Granollers, Spain
5 Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain
6 Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Barcelona, Spain
Bilinguals are faster to produce words in their first language (L1) when the distractor word corresponds to the target’s translation (L2) than when the distractor is an unrelated word. Could this facilitation in lexical competition be abolished in patients with an impaired cognitive control? To test it we used a cross-language version of the Stroop task in bilingual older adults, MCI and AD patients. Participants were required to name colour in Catalan with three types of Spanish words: the name of the colour, the name of a different colour and the name of an unrelated word. Older adults and patients showed the same amount of cross-language identity facilitation: 35 ms faster to name colour in L1 when the distractor word in L2 was the name of the colour than when it was an unrelated word. But slower naming latencies were found when participants had to name words with a name of different colour. This interference effect was larger for MCI (255 ms) and AD (308 ms) compared to older adult controls (177 ms). It is concluded that dementia does not affect the lexical competition during speech production since the cross-language identity facilitation was reliable in patients as in older controls.