Influence of language dominance on crosslinguistic and nonlinguistic interference resolution in bilinguals

Abstract

We examined how relative language dominance impacts Spanish–English bilinguals’ crosslinguistic and nonlinguistic interference resolution abilities during a web-based Spanish picture-word interference naming task and a subsequent spatial Stroop paradigm, and the relationship between the two. Results show the expected interference and facilitation effects in the online setting across both tasks. Additionally, participants with greater English dominance had larger within-language, Spanish facilitation and marginally larger crosslinguistic (English to Spanish) interference effects reflected on accuracy performance. Similarly, participants with greater English dominance had larger nonlinguistic congruency facilitation effects. Our results are in line with other studies finding a relation between linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive control. Correlated reaction time performance between the linguistic and nonlinguistic paradigms suggests that overcoming crosslinguistic interference may be partly based on cognitive control processes used outside of language. Modulations by language dominance underline the importance of accounting for relative language proficiency in bilinguals’ two languages when studying bilingualism.