Pivneva, I. , Delpero, E. & Titone, D.
McGill University
We investigated whether individual differences in inhibitory capacity modulate within- and between-language competition during bilingual speech production. 24 French-English bilinguals produced short sentences in response to a picture array ("The hose and the stove are above the bridge"). Filler arrays varied the syntactic forms produced ("The tape is above the rug and the car"), and parafoveal preview of upcoming pictures was blocked using gaze- contingent methods. Our dependent measure was the time participants fixated the second picture of each array before naming it (gaze- speech latency). Participants performed an L1-only block, L2-only block, and an L1-L2 mixed block. Participants also completed an executive function and language proficiency battery. As expected, gaze-speech latencies were shorter for L1 vs. L2 speech production, and for pictures with only one plausible name vs. multiple plausible names. More interestingly, increased inhibitory capacity was associated with shorter gaze-speech latencies in the L2-only block for pictures that had more than one plausible name, and with a reduced L2 production cost for all pictures in the more demanding L1-L2 mixed block. Thus, increased inhibitory capacity helps bilinguals resolve within- and between-language competition during natural language production over and above the effects of L2 proficiency.