The source of attention modulations in bilingual language contexts

• Main Authors: Costa, A. (Author), Timmer, K. (Author), Wodniecka, Z. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Academic Press Inc. 2021
• Subjects: adult; article; Attention; attention network test; Bilingual language context; case report; clinical article; female; human; human experiment; language; male; Switching
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher

 Bilinguals who switch from a monolingual context to a bilingual context enhance their domain-general attentional system. But what drives the adaptation process and translates into the observed increased efficiency of the attentional system? To uncover the origin of the plasticity in a bilingual's language experience, we investigated whether switching between other types of categories also modulated domain-general attentional processes. We compared performance of Catalan-Spanish bilinguals across three experiments in which participants performed the Attentional Network Test in a mixed context and in two single contexts that were created by interleaving words with flankers. The contexts were related to switching (or not) between languages (Experiment-1) or between low-level perceptual color categories (Experiment-2) or between linguistic categories (Experiment-3). Both switching between languages and linguistic categories revealed increased target-P3 amplitudes in mixed contexts compared to single contexts. These findings can inform the Inhibitory Control model regarding the locus and domain-generality of attentional adaptations. © 2021 The Authors