Wodniecka, Z. 1 , Zeelenberg, R. 2 , Marzecová, A. 1 , Szewczyk, J. 1 & Taft, M. 3
1 Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
2 Institute of Psychology, Erasmus University Rotterdam , The Netherlands
3 School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
In bilinguals, both languages are activated in parallel. How does this simultaneous activation affect language selection? Polish-English bilinguals with varying degrees of language balance participated in a competitor priming paradigm study. During the study-phase, participants read words presented in either English or Polish and performed a word completion task. During the test phase, participants named pictures in both languages. The pictures were either 1) old items named in the same language as during study (congruent), 2) old items named in the other language (incongruent) or 3) nonstudied items. Half of the participants named pictures in separate language blocks and half switched between languages within block. Participants were faster to name congruent items than new items, but the item repetition effect was attenuated in the incongruent condition. When pictures were named in L1, participants were as slow for the incongruent items as they were for new items (and even slower when naming involved switching between languages). When pictures were named in L2, the pattern depended on L2 proficiency: balanced bilinguals showed a similar pattern as for L1, whereas unbalanced showed no competition effect for incongruent items. The results indicate involvement of inhibition during language selection.