Modulating effects of interactional contexts on bilinguals’ cognitive control: Evidence for the Adaptive Control Hypothesis

Aims and Objects: The Adaptive Control Hypothesis (ACH) proposed that different interactional contexts place different demands on cognitive processes for bilinguals. However, how cognitive control processes dynamically adapt to comprehending and producing languages in different interactional contexts is still poorly understood. This study investigated how different language interactional contexts (i.e., single-language, dual-language, and dense code-switching) modulate cognitive control in bilingual language comprehension. Methodology: Inhibitory control in 36 Chinese -English bilinguals was examined through flanker tasks. Participants’ language and cognitive control statuses in the three interactional contexts were manipulated through three different types of dialogue-listening. After they listened to each type of dialogue, they were instructed to complete the flanker task and answer 10 comprehension questions related to the dialogue. Data and analysis: Repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) compared participants’ reaction times and response accuracy in flanker tasks across the three interactional contexts. Similarly, their language comprehension performances across different interactional contexts were also compared. Findings/conclusions: Both the dual-language and Chinese single-language contexts showed significant facilitatory effects on participants’ inhibitory control efficiency. Furthermore, participants performed more accurately on answering comprehension questions in the Chinese single-language context, indicating the dominant language effects on modulating bilinguals’ language comprehension performance. Such effects were not found in the dense code-switching and dual-language contexts. Originality: This study provided empirical evidence for the facilitatory effects of dual-language contexts on cognitive control in bilingual language comprehension process, which further extends the ACH to bilingual’s cognitive process associated with language comprehension. Significance/implications: In general, it is an attempt to explore the associations between interactional contexts and cognitive control through bilingual language and cognitive processing manipulations.