The minimum requirements of language control: Evidence from sequential predictability effects in language switching.

Abstract

The current study systematically examined the influence of sequential predictability of languages and concepts on language switching. To this end, 2 language switching paradigms were combined. To measure language switching with a random sequence of languages and/or concepts, we used a language switching paradigm that implements visual cues and stimuli. The other paradigm implements a fixed sequence of languages and/or concepts to measure predictable language switching. Four experiments that used these 2 paradigms showed that switch costs were smaller when both the language and concept were predictably known, whereas no overall switch cost reduction was found when just the language or concept was predictable. These results indicate that knowing both language and concept (i.e., response) can resolve language interference. However, interference resolution does not start solely based on the knowledge of which concept or language one has to produce. We discuss how existent models should be revised to accommodate these results.