Submitted by tomash on 24 February, 2011 - 08:56.
The PSYCHOLinguistics Reading Group
We invite everybody interested to a presentation of research projects conducted by PhD and MA students in the Department of English Language Acquisition focusing on
SWITCHING COSTS
Anna Klecha
Language and task switching in bilinguals
The presentation will concentrate on a research project aiming to compare bilinguals on language and task switching. Having tested bilinguals and monolinguals on task switching, Prior and MacWhinney (2010) reported a bilingual advantage which was attributed to the language switching practice of bilinguals, considered to involve similar cognitive processes. As these processes differ, depending on the bilinguals' proficiency and the degree of balance between the two languages (Costa and Santesteban 2004), testing bilinguals on both linguistic and non-linguistic task switching should reveal possible correlations between the efficiency of performing the former and the latter.
Jacek Kowalczyk
The role of inhibition in language switching: Investigating the L1-repeat-benefit hypothesis of asymmetrical switch costs
How can bilinguals switch between languages during speech production? Inhibition hypothesis posits that larger reaction-time costs for switching to the L1 than to the L2 result from suppression of the non-target language. Switch cost asymmetries, however, can also be accounted for by an L1-repeat-benefit hypothesis, which holds that language competition is selectively absent in the case of L1 repeat, resulting in relatively fast L1 repeat. The aim of the present study is to test the latter hypothesis by letting unbalanced Polish-English bilinguals bias the target language-set by means of endogenous control in a picture naming task, thus allowing strategic inhibition of the non-target language.
Monday, 28 February, 18:30, room 601
