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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS
published: 20 March 2018
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00366
Edited by:
Roberto Filippi,
University College London,
United Kingdom
Reviewed by:
Antonella Sorace,
University of Edinburgh,
United Kingdom
Sara Incera,
Eastern Kentucky University,
United States
*Correspondence:
Ziying Yu
ziying_yu@umail.ucsb.edu
John W. Schwieter
jschwieter@wlu.ca
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Language Sciences,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 18 January 2018
Accepted: 05 March 2018
Published: 20 March 2018
Citation:
Yu Z and Schwieter JW (2018)
Recognizing the Effects of Language
Mode on the Cognitive Advantages
of Bilingualism. Front. Psychol. 9:366.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00366
Recognizing the Effects of Language
Mode on the Cognitive Advantages
of Bilingualism
Ziying Yu1,2*and John W. Schwieter3,4*
1Department of English Language and Literature, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, 2Department of Linguistics, University
of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States, 3Language Acquisition, Multilingualism, and Cognition
Laboratory, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, Canada, 4Bilingualism, Translation, and Cognition Laboratory, University
of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States
For bilinguals, it is argued that a cognitive advantage can be linked to the constant
management and need for conflict resolution that occurs when the two languages
are co-activated (Bialystok, 2015). Language mode (Grosjean, 1998, 2001) is a
significant variable that defines and shapes the language experiences of bilinguals and
consequently, the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Previous work, however, has
not sufficiently tested the effects of language mode on the bilingual experience. In this
brief conceptual analysis, we discuss the significance of language mode in bilingual
work on speech perception, production, and reading. We offer possible explanations
for conflicting findings and ways in which future work should control for its modulating
effects.
Keywords: language mode, language activation, cognitive benefits of bilingualism, language control,
multilingualism
INTRODUCTION
The claim that the knowledge and use of multiple languages gives rise to cognitive benefits is a
hotly debated area of research in psycholinguistics and bilingualism (see Barac et al., 2014;Blom
et al., 2017 for recent reviews). At any given point in time, and based on numerous psychosocial,
situational, and linguistic factors, a bilingual must decide which language to use and how much of
the other irrelevant language must be controlled or suppressed (Green, 1998). It is this constant
management and monitoring of more than one language system that may be most responsible for
the reported advantages in general executive functions (Bialystok et al., 2012; but see Hilchey and
Klein, 2011;Paap et al., 2015 for alternate views).
Although a bilingual’s two languages are constantly in a state of co-activation, Green and
Abutalebi’s (2013) Adaptive Control Hypothesis argues that the relative degree1of such activation
for each language is dynamically adaptive. This hypothesis builds on the fact that bilinguals
vary regarding language use in several contexts (Green, 2011;Prior and Gollan, 2011) and links
this variation with underlying cognitive and neural control mechanisms. Green and Abutalebi
(2013) argue that the control mechanisms adapt in response to bilingual experiences and to the
recurrent demands placed on them in interactional situations. It might be the case that bilinguals
outperform their monolingual counterparts in some cognitive tasks because this advantage may
1By ‘degree of activation,’ we refer to the magnitude of language activation. While even today, it “remains to be determined
what it means to say that languages can be activated to different degrees” (Dijkstra, 2005, p. 199), a recent study by Incera
and McLennan (2018) found that differences in the timing of interference, but not in the magnitude of interference, led to
differential effects within and between languages.
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Yu and Schwieter Language Mode
be a representation of their superior ability to be adaptive to
situational (e.g., experimental) needs. If this is the case, various
experiences with language mode may confound the implications
for a bilingual advantage. In order to study the nature of
these effects more accurately and directly, researchers must
take into account speakers’ language experiences thoroughly
(Luk and Bialystok, 2013;Schwieter and Ferreira, 2016). These
experiences are modulated by the limited capacity and goal-
directed selectivity of the human executive functions.
Grosjean (1998, 2001) proposed and developed a notion of
language mode which refers to the state of activation of the
bilingual’s languages and language processing mechanisms at a
given point in time. In other words, language mode concerns the
degree of activation of the two languages in a bilingual’s mind.
According to Grosjean, due to the influence of the environment,
bilinguals continuously and naturally find themselves on a
situational continuum of language activation, ranging from a
monolingual to a bilingual mode. Three hypothetical positions
can be visualized in this framework. When the bilingual is said to
be in or close to being in a monolingual mode, a base language
(i.e., the primary language being processed or produced at the
time, not necessarily L1 for a bilingual) is the most active in terms
of environmental activation (since the base language can also
be L2 for an unbalanced bilingual), while the other non-target
language is much less activated (but never totally deactivated).
When the bilingual moves on the continuum and stops at an
intermediate mode, the non-target language is more active than
in the monolingual mode, whereas the base language remains
the most activated language. When the bilingual is in a bilingual
mode, in which the two languages are utilized from time to time
in the form of code-switching or borrowings, the non-target
language is highly active (but not as active as the base language).
At all three positions, the base language remains fully active, as
it is the main language that governs language perception and
production.
Language activation is modulated by several variables
including participants’ characteristics. While language mode
focuses on environmental characteristics, participants’
characteristics including language proficiency and language
dominance may change the activation level of languages.
Dunn and Fox Tree (2014, p. 611) argued that “although
there was no interaction between language mode and bilingual
dominance, language mode can be made clearer when bilingual
proficiency is controlled.” Consequently, we discuss participants’
characteristics in this paper in cases where researchers are careful
to minimize their confounding influence.
Given that language mode plays an important role in language
activation, it likely should be considered a modulating factor in
the bilingual advantage debate. However, these possible effects
have been unintentionally ignored, oftentimes by employing
experimental designs that place and maintain participants in
an intermediate mode. This misrepresents the true bilingual
experience which consists of diverse interactions with and
placements on the language mode spectrum and consequently
uncovers findings that may be ambiguous or conflicting. Below,
we discuss the important role of language mode in research
on bilingual language activation, including speech perception,
speech production, and reading. We offer ways in which
studies investigating the cognitive advantages of bilingualism can
consider the role of language mode.
SPEECH PERCEPTION
In the area of bilingual speech perception, bilingual participants
from some studies (e.g., Spivey and Marian, 1999;Colomé,
2001) may have been closer to an intermediate mode on the
language mode continuum. Although the researchers examined
one base language throughout the experiment, a number
of confounding factors may have activated the participants’
other languages, consequently moving them away from the
monolingual endpoint. Although it is difficult and perhaps
impossible to place a bilingual in a complete monolingual mode
throughout a task, a few experiments have attempted to control
for language mode. In a lexical decision task, Soares and Grosjean
(1984) compared Portuguese-English bilinguals’ reaction times
(RTs) to words and non-words in English monolingual mode,
Portuguese monolingual mode, and code-switching bilingual
mode. Their results demonstrated that bilinguals were slower to
access code-switched words in the bilingual mode than they were
for words in the monolingual modes.
Similar findings were reported by Dunn and Fox Tree (2014)
whose study made strides toward controlling for language mode
effects. The study examined both English monolinguals and
English-Spanish bilinguals who were divided into two groups
before the experiment. Bilingual participants were randomly
yet equally assigned to either the bilingual mode group or the
monolingual mode group (consisting of monolinguals), and
their bilingual language proficiency was first roughly assessed
on an online survey during the online registration process (i.e.,
target questions about language ability were hidden in a variety
of questions), and then was further assessed by a language
dominance scale assessment and an individual interview after
the completion of the experiment, minimizing the influence of
confounding variables such as language dominance and language
proficiency. Therefore, all participants had little reason to expect
that their multilingual ability would be relevant for the study.
The researchers also scheduled data collection sessions at times
that minimized participants’ chance of encountering bilingual
speakers or bilingual situations in the laboratory.
Dunn and Fox Tree’s (2014) study used a matched-pair
design in the three experimental parts: in Part 1, all participants
including English-speaking monolinguals and Spanish-English
bilinguals were approached by a non-Latino experimenter and
were asked to perform an English lexical decision with all
instructions in English. In Part 2, all participants viewed a
silent video clip about the Pink Panther and were asked
to retell the story to the experimenter. In the monolingual
mode group, since the need for Spanish was not mentioned,
both the bilinguals and monolinguals should assume that their
retellings be done in English, an assumption on which they
acted corrected. However, in the bilingual mode group, bilinguals
were approached by a Spanish-speaking experimenter. They were
told in the instructions that Spanish retellings would enrich the
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database and were therefore asked to retell the story in Spanish. In
Part 3, all participants performed another English lexical decision
task. The results from the first lexical decision task (Part 1)
showed that RTs did not differ between the two language mode
groups. However, results from the second lexical decision task
(Part 3) suggested that language mode significantly affected RTs
such that bilinguals processed non-words slower in bilingual
mode than in monolingual mode. Further analyses demonstrated
similar RTs for English monolinguals and bilinguals in the
monolingual mode. This finding not only supported the language
mode hypothesis, but also appeared to diverge from Soares and
Grosjean’s (1984) argument that bilinguals, regardless of which
language mode they find themselves in, access words slower than
monolinguals. It is likely that these differential results can be
explained by the influence of several confounding factors in an
experimental context in which participants were not fully in a
monolingual mode.
In addition to the lexical decision task, evidence supporting
the notion of language modes comes from picture-word
interference tasks. Marian and Spivey (2003) found that in
a monolingual mode, interference from the second language
(L2) on the first language (L1) was not found, forming a
contrast with the cross-linguistic effects while in a bilingual
mode. However, interference from L1 to L2 was significant.
Using the same paradigm, Canseco-Gonzalez et al. (2010) found
that early Spanish-English bilinguals displayed inter-lingual
competition that was significantly larger when they were tested
in a bilingual mode (9.5% more fixations on the cohort than on
the unrelated object) than in a monolingual mode (5%). These
two studies suggest that not only language mode (environmental
characteristics) but also participants’ characteristics such as
language dominance and proficiency may modulate language
activation. Importantly, the location on the language mode
continuum will have a direct effect on language activation
in terms of speech perception with inter-lingual competition
becoming larger when the participants stay closer to the bilingual
mode.
SPEECH PRODUCTION
Language mode also exerts considerable influence on bilinguals’
language production. Jared and Kroll (2001) simulated a
monolingual mode in the first part of a picture-naming
experiment and found little activation of the non-target language
when participants expected to see only one language and were
given stimuli and instructions in the same language. This
consistently appeared to be the case except for when the
non-target language was the participant’s dominant language.
Nevertheless, when stimuli were given in both languages, as in
Hermans et al. (2011), cross-language phonological co-activation
appeared sensitive to the cognate status of the stimuli. These
results supported the modulating effects of language mode: the
higher the ratio of cognates to non-cognates, the higher the
activation level of the non-target language.
In another study by Boukadi et al. (2015), Tunisian Arabic-
French bilinguals named pictures in their L2 while ignoring
auditory distractors. Bilingual participants were all native
speakers of Tunisian Arabic who started learning French from
primary school. Their L2 proficiency was assessed by means of
self-ratings and a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, the
non-target language (Tunisian Arabic) was entirely absent in the
experimental setting: all instructions were exclusively given in
French and the students were not informed that the research
was related to bilingualism until the end of the study. The
participants were asked not to use their native language under any
circumstances and to only communicate with the experimenter
in French. The target stimuli were line-drawings of common
objects and the auditory distractors were presented in French.
Four French words were selected for each picture to serve as
distractors based on the following conditions: phono-translation
(the distractor was phonologically related to the picture name in
L1); semantic (the distractor and target picture were semantically
related); phonological (the distractor was phonologically related
to the picture name in L1); and unrelated (the distractor had
no relation to the picture name). No significant differences
between the unrelated, phono-translation, or semantic condition
were observed, which indicated that lexical selection proceeded
in a language-specific way when the experimental setting was
maintained in a monolingual mode. More importantly, the
phono-translation effect remained insignificant even when L2
proficiency was taken into account. In Experiment 2, both
languages appeared in the task in order to create a bilingual
experimental setting, and bilinguals, who were selected from the
same pool as Experiment 1, knew that the research had to do with
a topic on bilingualism. They were allowed to speak in their L1
and were asked to name pictures in their L2 while ignoring an
auditory distractor in their L1. Although the explicit instructions
in Experiment 1 may have activated the irrelevant language,
breaking a purely monolingual environment, Experiment 1 still
created an environmental situation in which participants were
closer to the monolingual end on the continuum compared
with Experiment 2. In terms of the stimuli, Experiment 2
used the same pictures as in Experiment 1, but the auditory
distracters were in Tunisian Arabic (the semantic distractors
were the equivalent Tunisian Arabic translation of the French
semantic distractors in Experiment 1). The results showed that
RTs were significantly longer in both the phono-translation
(965 ms) and semantic condition (934 ms) compared to the
unrelated condition (918 ms). Taken together, the results of the
two experiments suggest that language selection during bilingual
speech production is a dynamic process modulated by language
mode; the closer to the bilingual end of the continuum, the more
activated the non-target language becomes. These findings also
support the notion that the language mode of the experiment has
modulating effects on the activation of bilinguals’ languages.
READING
Language mode also affects bilingual lexical access during word
reading, as shown in a study carried out by Dijkstra et al.
(2000). Dutch-English bilinguals with an average English learning
time of 11.4 years participated in an English lexical decision
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task including English-Dutch homographs and cognates, as well
as exclusively English control words. The total stimulus set
was composed of homographs (no semantic similarity across
languages), controls, English fillers, Dutch fillers, and non-words
(orthographically permissible in English and not homophonic
to Dutch words). The experiment included two parts, each
consisting of 28 blocks of 8 stimuli including one homograph
and one control item. In part 1, the remaining six item slots of
each block were randomly filled with only English fillers or non-
words, whereas in part 2, Dutch words were also included. The
participants received the same instructions and communication
with the experimenter (in English) for an English lexical decision
task, but they were explicitly told that word forms that exist in
both English and Dutch (homograph) required a “yes” response,
while words only belonging to Dutch required a “no” response.
After the experiment, all participants filled in a questionnaire to
assess their L2 (English) proficiency. In this regard, part 1 of this
experiment could be regarded as being close to a monolingual
mode. The results showed that the RTs for homographs in part 2
were considerably slower (613 ms) than in part 1 (575 ms). This
suggested that lexical selection took more time in the bilingual
mode than in the monolingual mode and that participant moved
closer to non-selective language activation. In addition, it should
also be taken into account that the transition from part 1 to
part 2 was rather abrupt, as RTs to interlingual homographs
(from 581 to 663 ms) were considerably slower immediately after
the transition. Consequently, encountering non-target language
items during the experiment changes the language mode and
exerts immediate and severe effects on bilingual lexical access
during reading.
In Experiment 3 of a study by De Groot et al. (2000), the
researchers mixed real words in the non-target language and non-
words in the target language, forming a comparison with their
Experiment 2 in which all the non-words were neither real words
in the irrelevant language nor were they a mixture of the two
languages. As a result, the participants responded to homographs
faster in Experiment 2 (557 ms) than in Experiment 3 (619 ms).
This provides support that the participants performed the task
differently depending on the language mode simulated in the
experiments: bilinguals processed words faster when the setting
was more language-specific. In another study, Lemhöfer and
Radach (2009) conducted a pure-German, a pure-English, and a
mixed lexical decision task on the same set of non-words. Results
showed that RTs varied according to the context of the task: in
the monolingual context, participants made more mistakes and
took longer to reject non-words that were more similar to the
target language; in the bilingual context, RTs were significantly
slower than RTs in the monolingual task with non-words that
resembled the participants’ less-dominant language being harder
to reject.
While some experiments have manipulated language mode
by changing the composition of the stimuli, other studies have
adjusted experimental settings of the task. Elston-Güttler et al.
(2005) modified language mode by showing films with narration
in different languages. They found that in an all-L2 sentence task
with L2 pre-task priming (a film in the L2), RTs were significantly
faster and decision thresholds were raised high enough to
eliminate observable L1 influence on the L2. However, cross-
linguistic interference was observed in the other experiment
group who had L1 pre-task priming (a film in the L1). More
recently, Khachatryan et al. (2016) manipulated the length of
stimulus presentation in an L1 semantic priming task. Most of the
subjects who saw stimuli presented for a shorter duration were
aware of the presence of L2 manipulation, whereas none of the
subjects in the other group were aware of this, placing the former
group closer to bilingual mode and the latter group closer to
monolingual mode. A significant facilitative effect of related word
pairs in L2 was found when stimuli presentations were shorter
but not when they were longer, indicating that the awareness of
covert manipulation of L2 can influence the language mode and
consequently what is measured in the laboratory. In short, these
experiments suggest that both the selection of stimuli and the
experimental contexts have the potential to modulate language
activation in reading among bilinguals, and that the level of
activation of the non-target language increases as the stimuli
involve more words in the irrelevant language or as the setting
moves closer to the bilingual context.
CONFLICTING FINDINGS
Although as shown above, several studies have reported on the
role of language mode and its influence on language activation,
there are contradictory findings. In our opinion, there are at
least two possible explanations for these conflicting results.
First, language activation may have been artificially induced by
the experimental paradigms. Some experiments claim to have
provided a “monolingual mode,” which in fact is an intermediate
mode in disguise. Since language mode is quite sensitive to
a wide range of factors, it takes lengthy efforts to create
a purely monolingual environment, and therefore movement
along the language mode continuum can be rather easy. For
instance, according to previous studies (e.g., Hermans et al., 2011;
Khachatryan et al., 2016), the subject’s awareness of the purpose
of the study or a small proportion of cognate filler items suffice
to activate the non-target language; hence making it arbitrary
to assert the non-selectivity of language activation in all modes
(see also Costa et al., 2000;Van Hell and Dijkstra, 2002;Duyck
et al., 2007). Furthermore, the presence of speakers of the non-
target language (e.g., bilingual experimenters or interlocutors
with whom participants may come into contact), the language
of all instructions, the discussion with or reports from other
participants, and even a certain location may all artificially
activate the non-target language to some extent, consequently
moving bilinguals away from a purely monolingual mode.
Furthermore, research specifically testing participants’
and languages’ characteristics including language dominance,
proficiency, and typology can explain some well-controlled
yet conflicting experiments. Studies have found that language
mode activation may vary when testing a dominant language
vs. less-dominant language or when comparing balanced
bilinguals to less-proficient bilinguals (e.g., Marian and Spivey,
2003;Lemhöfer and Dijkstra, 2004;Elston-Güttler et al., 2005;
Lemhöfer and Radach, 2009;Dunn and Fox Tree, 2014).
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Moreover, variability in bilingual proficiency remains one of
the main elements modulating non-target language activation
and of the network responsible for language control (Green,
2011). According to Abutalebi and Green (2007), cross-language
competition is greater among less-proficient bilinguals compared
to highly proficient bilinguals which explains why in a pure
monolingual mode (Colomé and Miozzo, 2010), the non-target
language is invariably activated. In addition, multilinguals whose
languages widely differ at lexical, grammatical, or phonological
levels showed smaller interference effects as other multilinguals
(van Heuven et al., 2011;Boukadi et al., 2015).
Green and Wei (2014) offer a similar account to speech
planning and the cognitive processes involved in speech
production, particularly in cases of code-switching. From a
competitive account, Green and Wei (2014, p. 509) argue the
importance of understanding “the interactional contexts of the
bilingual speaker.” Bilinguals utilize processes that are most
appropriate to certain situations and when they find themselves
code-switching, these switches are “coordinated cooperatively
and operate in a coupled or in an open-control mode. The
former permits alternations and insertions whereas the latter is
required for dense code-switching” (p. 499). For our purposes
here, Green and Wei’s (2014) work implies that certain situations
of multiple language use such as code-switching entail unique
demands on control mechanisms and we could hypothesize the
same for the unique demands needed as determined by many
factors, including language mode.
To have a fully monolingual mode, it seems best to recruit
both monolingual and bilingual participants so that the purpose
of studying a topic related to bilingualism would not be revealed
to the participants. Besides, during the experiment, the purpose
of the study should always remain unknown (although it may
be inadvertently disclosed after the critical experiments when
asking about things like language proficiency or background).
Alternatively, researchers can design several experiments to shift
the participants’ focus away from the study’s purpose or they
can invent a fictitious purpose as to prevent any activation of
the irrelevant language. Ideally, participants should be recruited
who have not academic knowledge of language selectivity,
bilingualism, or language activation. During the experiment, all
the experimental settings should be controlled carefully. For
instance, the environment of the study (such as the language
of the keyboard or computer system, posters on the wall, or
any visible written words) should be strictly controlled. The
experimenter should be highly proficient in the target language,
preferably an L1 speaker and all experimental instructions should
be given in that language as well. In addition, all materials
(both visual and audio) for the study should be in the target
language. The stimuli involved in lexical decision tasks should
avoid any homographs or cognates and written words can be
replaced with simple drawings in picture-naming tasks. In this
regard, it is easier for researchers who work on two typologically
different languages to simulate a more monolingual experimental
setting, but the language competition between two different
languages may be much weaker than that between two similar
languages.
Taking language dominance and proficiency into
consideration, it might be ideal to have a matched-pair design
in order to make reliable comparisons with the bilingual
mode. Consequently, the ideal location would be a place where
two languages are equally used and the community attitude
toward bilingualism should be positive. Ideally participants in
monolingual and bilingual mode groups should be matched on
their language proficiency in both languages, especially in L2.
This can easily be done post-experiment by conducting a series
of standardized tests on listening, writing, speaking, or reading
abilities.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In line with Festman and Schwieter (2015) who argue that
bilingual language control and activation should be studied
using methods that include both mixed- and single-language
experimental blocks, we would like to underscore here the
importance of language mode as a confounding variable in
studies looking at bilingual language activation and consequently,
its implication for the cognitive benefits of bilingualism.
Language mode is an important variable that modulates language
activation. Simulating different points of the language mode
continuum will elicit different results in studies of bilingual
speech perception, production, and reading. It appears as
though the more monolingual the language mode is, the more
likely bilinguals will perform selective language processing.
Consequently, language mode modulates language activation
and alters the bilingual experience accordingly. However,
language activation is also modulated by the interplay of several
variables including task and participant characteristics making
it challenging to create a pure monolingual mode in which
selective language processing may occur. Language mode should
be invariably considered as a potential and possible influence
on multilingual experience. Given the importance and timeliness
of this issue, future studies should specifically test the role
that language mode plays in the bilingual experience and
the modulating effects it may have on the cognitive benefits
associated with bilingualism.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
ZY and JS have contributed equally to the development of this
paper.
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