ArticlePDF Available

Does Integrating a Code-Switch During Comprehension Engage Cognitive Control?

August 2019
Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition 46(4)

August 2019
46(4)

DOI:10.1037/xlm0000755

Authors:

Jorge Valdés Kroff

University of Florida

Jared Novick

University of Maryland, College Park

We investigated whether bilinguals' integration of a code-switch during real-time comprehension, which involves resolving among conflicting linguistic representations, modulates the deployment of cognitive-control mechanisms. In the current experiment, Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 48) completed a cross-task conflict-adaptation paradigm that tested whether reading code-switched sentences triggers cognitive-control engagement that immediately influences performance on an ensuing Flanker trial. We observed that, while incrementally processing sentences, detecting a code-switch (as opposed to reading sentences that did not contain a code-switch) assisted subsequent conflict resolution. Such temporal interdependence between confronting cross-linguistic conflict and ensuing adjustments in behavior indicates that integrating a code-switch during online comprehension may recruit domain-general cognitive-control procedures. We propose that such control mechanisms mobilize to resolve among competing representations that arise across languages during real-time parsing of code-switched input. Overall, the findings provide novel insight into what language-processing demands of bilingualism regulate cognitive-control performance moment by moment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Example display sequence and timing for one sentence-Flanker pair. Following each trial, there was an intertrial interval (ITI) of 1,000 ms, followed by a 500-ms fixation cross and then the next trial. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

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Mean response time (RT) for Flanker type as a function of the prior sentence trial (code-switched vs. not). (A) All trials; (B) Split by experimental half. Error bars represent standard errors. INC incongruent; CON congruent; CS code-switch; NS nonswitch; n.s. not significant. Log-transformed RTs were used for analysis, but raw RTs are shown here for clarity. p .05.

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Journal of Experimental Psychology:

Learning, Memory, and Cognition

Does Integrating a Code-Switch During Comprehension

Engage Cognitive Control?

Rachel M. Adler, Jorge R. Valdés Kroff, and Jared M. Novick

Online First Publication, August 26, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000755

CITATION

Adler, R. M., Valdés Kroff, J. R., & Novick, J. M. (2019, August 26). Does Integrating a Code-Switch

During Comprehension Engage Cognitive Control?. Journal of Experimental Psychology:

Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000755

Does Integrating a Code-Switch During Comprehension Engage

Cognitive Control?

Rachel M. Adler

University of Maryland, College Park Jorge R. Valdés Kroff

University of Florida

Jared M. Novick

University of Maryland, College Park

We investigated whether bilinguals’ integration of a code-switch during real-time comprehension, which

involves resolving among conflicting linguistic representations, modulates the deployment of cognitive-

control mechanisms. In the current experiment, Spanish-English bilinguals (N⫽48) completed a

cross-task conflict-adaptation paradigm that tested whether reading code-switched sentences triggers

cognitive-control engagement that immediately influences performance on an ensuing Flanker trial. We

observed that, while incrementally processing sentences, detecting a code-switch (as opposed to reading

sentences that did not contain a code-switch) assisted subsequent conflict resolution. Such temporal

interdependence between confronting cross-linguistic conflict and ensuing adjustments in behavior

indicates that integrating a code-switch during online comprehension may recruit domain-general

cognitive-control procedures. We propose that such control mechanisms mobilize to resolve among

competing representations that arise across languages during real-time parsing of code-switched input.

Overall, the findings provide novel insight into what language-processing demands of bilingualism

regulate cognitive-control performance moment by moment.

Keywords: bilingualism, comprehension, conflict adaptation, cognitive control, code-switching

While processing text or speech, readers and listeners rapidly

commit to provisional analyses of the input as it unfolds by

coordinating multiple sources of linguistic and nonlinguistic cues

to guide interpretation in real time (e.g., Altmann & Kamide, 1999;

MacDonald, Pearlmutter, & Seidenberg, 1994; Tanenhaus, Spivey-

Knowlton, Eberhard, & Sedivy, 1995). Though efficient, one by-

product of incremental language processing is that we frequently

confront temporary ambiguity that must be quickly resolved. For

instance, words can have many meanings, and phrases can be

consistent with multiple structures. A typical consequence of pars-

ing “on the fly” then is that early processing decisions sometimes

turn out to be wrong once later-arriving evidence conflicts with a

developing analysis. According to one model, cognitive-control

procedures resolve conflict at multiple levels of representation

once a reader or listener discovers a misanalysis, thereby prevent-

ing comprehension from running astray. Specifically, conflict-

resolution mechanisms engage to rein in an incorrect characteriza-

tion of the input to promote an alternative one (Novick, Trueswell,

& Thompson-Schill, 2005).

Much of the evidence supporting this account derives from

sentence-processing studies in monolinguals (but see Teubner-

Rhodes et al., 2016). Here, we consider how the real-time parsing

demands of bilingual language processing may distinctively create

conflict and recruit cognitive control. Specifically, we focus on the

online comprehension of code-switches, that is, the alternation

between languages within bilingual speech or text (Poplack, 1980).

On the surface, it may seem odd that bilinguals purposefully

code-switch with other bilinguals, because the prospect of a switch

between languages potentially introduces greater ambiguity. Yet

code-switching is a ubiquitous bilingual practice in conversation

and increasingly in writing (e.g., emails, online chats, texts; Guz-

zardo Tamargo, Valdés Kroff, & Dussias, 2016; Montes-Alcalá,

2000). Although the reasons why bilinguals code-switch involve a

complex array of cognitive, structural, and pragmatic factors (e.g.,

Bullock & Toribio, 2009; Gardner-Chloros, 2009), the very act of

switching between languages within a discourse generates cross-

linguistic conflict at multiple linguistic levels of representation

Rachel M. Adler, Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science and

Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland,

College Park; Jorge R. Valdés Kroff, Department of Spanish and Portu-

guese Studies, University of Florida; Jared M. Novick, Program in Neu-

roscience and Cognitive Science and Department of Hearing and Speech

Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park.

We thank Julian Acierno, Chris Dean, Karen Gonzalez, Damaris

Mayans-Ramon, Hannah Sichel, Ana Vilfort, and Kelly Woodfine for

assistance with stimulus design, data collection, and/or data coding. This

work was partially supported by a Research and Scholarship from the

University of Maryland to Jared M. Novick.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jorge R.

Valdés Kroff, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University

of Florida, 170 Dauer Hall, P.O. Box 117405, Gainesville, FL 326011, or

to Jared M. Novick, Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Univer-

sity of Maryland, 0100 Lefrak Hall, College Park, MD 20742. E-mail:

jvaldeskroff@ufl.edu or jnovick1@umd.edu

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Journal of Experimental Psychology:

Learning, Memory, and Cognition

ISSN: 0278-7393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000755

(phonological, lexical, morpho-syntactic, etc.). From the compre-

hender’s standpoint, this conflict must be resolved promptly to

prevent a communicative exchange from reaching a bottleneck or

breaking down entirely.

According to the proposal found in Novick et al. (2005),

conflict-control procedures engage to resolve incompatible repre-

sentations that arise in the natural course of incremental parsing.

We pursue a theoretical connection between the demands of bi-

lingual language comprehension and cognitive-control engage-

ment within this established framework. To this end, we test the

hypothesis that encountering a code-switch during sentence inter-

pretation generates cross-linguistic conflict, which in turn recruits

domain-general cognitive control. Namely, successfully integrat-

ing code-switches during comprehension may lead to processing

costs (e.g., Altarriba, Kroll, Sholl, & Rayner, 1996; Litcofsky &

Van Hell, 2017; Meuter & Allport, 1999; Moreno, Federmeier, &

Kutas, 2002) and therefore may benefit from cognitive-control

engagement to bias processing toward task-relevant cues. We will

report initial evidence from an experiment that manipulates

language-processing demands (e.g., code-switching vs. not) to test

the effects of this manipulation on bilinguals’ cognitive-control

performance. To preview our results, we show that reading code-

switched sentences on one trial (as opposed to single-language

sentences) immediately assists performance on a nonverbal

Flanker task on the next trial. This finding indicates that the

conflict-processing demands of interpreting code-switches mobi-

lize cognitive-control mechanisms to deploy as cross-linguistic

conflict is detected. This link carries implications for understand-

ing the cognitive mechanisms that engage during bilingual lan-

guage processing.

Although we examine the interaction between cognitive control

and bilingual sentence processing, we do not test the purported

bilingual advantage. Whether bilinguals show cognitive-control

benefits over monolinguals is controversial, and the findings are

mixed (e.g., Abutalebi et al., 2012; Bialystok, Craik, & Luk, 2008;

cf. Colzato et al., 2008; de Bruin, Treccani, & Della Sala, 2015;

Duñabeitia et al., 2014; Hartanto & Yang, 2016; Hilchey & Klein,

2011; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008; Morton & Harper, 2007;

Paap & Greenberg, 2013; Paap, Sawi, Dalibar, Darrow, & Myüz,

2014; Pelham & Abrams, 2014; Prior & Gollan, 2011; Prior &

MacWhinney, 2010; Stasenko, Matt, & Gollan, 2017; Valian,

2015; von Bastian, Souza, & Gade, 2016; Yang, Hartanto, &

Yang, 2016). Instead, we leverage discrepant results to raise ques-

tions about linking assumptions: What properties of bilingualism

might engage cognitive control in the first place? Are there unique

language-processing demands that bilinguals face in real time that

might cause cognitive control to deploy? The answers to these

questions could have profound impact on the advantage contro-

versy by revealing how subtle manipulations of bilingual behavior

(i.e., interpreting a code-switch vs. not) leave immediate traces on

cognitive-control performance.

Our approach therefore assumes a more dynamic process at play

rather than cumulative differences: bilinguals’ experiences vary

widely, and their respective environments (e.g., where languages

are functionally kept separate vs. those who fluidly code-switch;

e.g., Green & Abutalebi, 2013; Green & Wei, 2014) may place

different pressures on cognitive control over time that may not

apply uniformly across all bilinguals as a fixed “trait.” Thus, our

study aims to uncover one such demand—code-switching—in

hopes of providing new insight into the conditions under which

bilingual language processing has a causal and direct impact on

more general cognitive-control procedures. This would ultimately

suggest that a more promising way to study the effects of bilin-

gualism on cognitive control would be to consider its “state” of

engagement, which may vary by language context, instead of

considering cognitive control as a population trait that is not

subject to subtle environmental influences. To address these is-

sues, we compare Spanish-English bilinguals with themselves,

testing whether cognitive-control performance fluctuates as a func-

tion of whether they are in a code-switching situation that creates

cross-linguistic conflict and, thus, pressure to engage cognitive

control to resolve it.

Before detailing our study, we briefly review relevant findings

on what we currently know about the role of cognitive control

during sentence processing in monolinguals, and then turn to how

these findings apply to understanding its role in sentence process-

ing conditions that are exclusively bilingual in nature, namely,

while interpreting code-switches.

Cognitive Control and Sentence Processing: Evidence

From Monolinguals

Cognitive control refers to the regulation of mental activity to

bias processing toward task-relevant information during goal-

directed behavior. This is particularly important when confronted

with information-conflict in the environment (Botvinick, Braver,

Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001; Miller & Cohen, 2001), which can

arise when current task demands require countermanding a dom-

inant way of representing a stimulus. In such cases, one must

rebias attention to other input characteristics that are related to

current task demands (think: Flanker and Stroop). In the domain of

sentence processing, cognitive control may adjust parsing strate-

gies in the moment according to pertinent cues, to keep compre-

hension on track.

This theoretical relationship is corroborated by data revealing a

causal connection between cognitive control and parsing in studies

that exploit the “conflict adaptation” phenomenon. Conflict adap-

tation refers to events where conflict detection initiates behavioral

regulation that attenuates the cost of resolving subsequent conflict

(e.g., Botvinick et al., 2001; Duthoo, Abrahamse, Braem, Boehler,

& Notebaert, 2014; Gratton, Coles, & Donchin, 1992; Kerns et al.,

2004; cf. Weissman, Colter, Grant, & Bissett, 2017). For instance,

adults are faster and more accurate to respond to an incongruent

Stroop trial (e.g., yellow in blue ink) if it follows another incon-

gruent trial as compared to a congruent one (e.g., green in green

ink). This pattern reflects sustained online adjustments in cognitive

control, yielding measurable behavioral savings when confronted

with new instances of conflict (but see Schmidt, 2018). To address

whether readers’ discovery of a misinterpretation engages cogni-

tive control during incremental parsing, Kan et al. (2013) designed

a cross-task conflict adaptation paradigm that pseudorandomly

interleaved Stroop conflict and no-conflict items with syntactically

unambiguous and ambiguous sentences that induced misanalysis.

They showed that temporary misinterpretation during comprehen-

sion, due to conflict between two incompatible representations of

sentence meaning, diminished the cost of processing Stroop-

conflict on an immediately ensuing trial, consistent with conflict

adaptation (see also Gollan, Sandoval, & Salmon, 2011; Hsu &

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2ADLER, VALDÉS KROFF, AND NOVICK

Novick, 2016; Thothathiri, Asaro, Hsu, & Novick, 2018). This

finding suggests that cognitive-control processes deploy following

misanalysis, theoretically to enable correction of comprehension

errors that would otherwise hamper communication. The present

research will take a similar approach to test whether interpreting a

code-switch, which involves the detection of cross-linguistic con-

flict, recruits cognitive control in the same way.

Although theoretical models differ in how they describe the

mechanisms underlying conflict-adaptation phenomena (e.g., cf.

Botvinick et al., 2001; Schmidt, 2018; Ullsperger, Bylsma, &

Botvinick, 2005; Weissman et al., 2017), most agree that such

behavioral adjustments reflect some form of reactive control to

bias processing toward task-relevant over task-irrelevant informa-

tion in the service of successful goal-directed behavior (Duthoo &

Notebaert, 2012). Regardless of the particular mechanism(s)

through which this is achieved, a cognitive filter of this sort assists

with the correction of performance errors and/or the prevention of

errors in the first place, which enhances behavioral functioning

(Nozari & Novick, 2017). Here, we report an experiment that tests

whether detecting a code-switch during real-time comprehension

regulates bilinguals’ ensuing behavior to optimize performance on

an arrow-Flanker task (by biasing processing toward the relevant

central arrow and away from the irrelevant flankers), even though

the two tasks’ stimuli and representations are from different do-

mains. Such an effect would suggest that this type of bilingual

language processing rapidly recruits a general-purpose control

mechanism.

Cognitive Control in Bilingual Language

Comprehension: Code-Switching as a Test Case

Bilingualism has been associated with distinctive cognitive-

control demands that arise from having to manage two languages

that link to a common conceptual order but do not share form

(Bialystok, Craik, Green, & Gollan, 2009; Green & Abutalebi,

2013). For instance, phonological, syntactic, and semantic repre-

sentations from a bilingual’s two languages are not walled-off

from each other, even when only one is currently in use (for

reviews, see Bialystok et al., 2009; Kroll, Dussias, Bice, & Per-

rotti, 2015). As spoken input or text unfolds, bilinguals experience

brief interference from sound-, form-, and meaning-based repre-

sentations from their other language until additional linguistic

evidence and/or contextual cues help resolve it (Chambers &

Cooke, 2009; Costa, Miozzo, & Caramazza, 1999; Grainger &

Frenck-Mestre, 1998; Schwartz & Kroll, 2006; Spivey & Marian,

1999; Van Assche, Duyck, Hartsuiker, & Diependaele, 2009).

Dealing with such cross-linguistic coactivation results in notable

costs to language processing, such as delays in lexical access

(Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008; Gollan, Slattery et al.,

2011; Ivanova & Costa, 2008; Olson, 2016).

However, in dual-language settings, the situation may become

more perilous: a listener must navigate additional demands for

resolving competition when her bilingual interlocutor code-

switches within a conversation—and particularly within the same

sentential clause (i.e., intrasentential code-switches; Poplack,

1980)—which draws her two lexicons and grammars into direct

conflict (Gollan, Schotter, Gomez, Murillo, & Rayner, 2014; Guz-

zardo Tamargo et al., 2016; Hernandez, Martinez, & Kohnert,

2000; Meuter & Allport, 1999; Valdés Kroff, Dussias, Gerfen,

Perrotti, & Bajo, 2017). Because languages rarely overlap entirely

in sound, structure, or meaning—even those that are typologically

or genealogically similar—this conflict creates potential hazards to

communication by increasing the prospect of uncertainty, confu-

sion or, worse, misinterpretation. Take, for instance,

1. Pero no tenían el flag out there?

(“But didn’t they have

the flag out there?”)

Here, the speaker switches from a Spanish determiner to an

English noun. Although this is a highly typical switch site in

Spanish-English code-switched speech (Jake, Myers-Scotton, &

Gross, 2002; Poplack, 1980; Valdés Kroff, 2016), Example 1

illustrates how cross-linguistic conflict between representations

from the two languages arises. Specifically, unlike English, Span-

ish nouns have grammatical gender and most determiners must

agree in gender with the noun. After the Spanish masculine defi-

nite article “el” then, a Spanish listener should expect a noun to

surface in Spanish, and for that noun to be masculine (the gender

congruency effect; Friederici & Jacobsen, 1999; Hagoort &

Brown, 1999; Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007). But in this case,

there are two violations of this bias that create conflict. First, the

sentence continues with a code-switch into an English word, flag,

instead of a preferred Spanish one. Second, the Spanish translation

equivalent of flag is bandera, which is actually feminine. Thus,

during real-time comprehension, the input generates incompatible

representations across languages: the listener commits to a Spanish

masculine noun upon hearing “Pero no tenían el . . .”, but late-

arriving evidence (“flag”) conflicts with this characterization of

the input (Beatty-Martínez & Dussias, 2017; Valdés Kroff et al.,

2017).

Such cross-linguistic conflict results in momentary slowdown or

greater unexpectancy (Altarriba et al., 1996; Moreno et al., 2002),

but bilinguals quickly recover, rarely arriving at the wrong inter-

pretation of a code-switched sentence (Beatty-Martínez & Dussias,

2017; Fricke, Kroll, & Dussias, 2016; Guzzardo Tamargo et al.,

2016; Kootstra, Van Hell, & Dijkstra, 2012; Valdés Kroff et al.,

2017). But how do bilinguals maintain such control over their

languages, integrating so seamlessly? Does processing a code-

switch in real time engage more general cognitive-control proce-

dures, much like when monolinguals deal with syntactic and/or

semantic conflict (Hsu & Novick, 2016; Kan et al., 2013;

Thothathiri et al., 2018)? The idea is that cognitive control may

assist with the resolution of competing cues across languages (e.g.,

“...tenían el flag...”) to allow integration of a code-switch with

representations built in the other language earlier in the sentence.

There is evidence that code-switches or switching more gener-

ally recruits bilinguals’ cognitive control. Neuroimaging studies

demonstrate greater activity in prefrontal areas when engaging in

language-switching (Abutalebi et al., 2007; Abutalebi & Green,

2008; Hernandez, Dapretto, Mazziotta, & Bookheimer, 2001; cf.

Blanco-Elorrieta & Pylkkan

˘en, 2017; Luk, Green, Abutalebi, &

Grady, 2012), and bilinguals’ performance on conflict-adaptation

paradigms suggest that they may bias information-processing more

proactively than monolinguals by recruiting brain regions involved

This example is taken from the Bangor Miami Corpus, a publicly

available Spanish-English bilingual spoken language corpus (see Deuchar,

Davies, Herring, Parata Cuoto, & Carter, 2014, for details).

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COMPREHENDING CODE-SWITCHES AND COGNITIVE CONTROL

in switching languages (Teubner-Rhodes, Bolger, & Novick, 2019;

see also Grundy, Chung-Fat-Yim, Friesen, Mak, & Bialystok,

2017). Similarly, German-English bilinguals who are “dense”

code-switchers (i.e., those who frequently and fluidly alternate

between languages within major sentential clause boundaries;

Green & Abutalebi, 2013) demonstrate a reduced Flanker effect as

compared to German-English bilinguals who are not dense code-

switchers (Hofweber, Marinis, & Treffers-Daller, 2016).

Although these studies suggest that code-switching may involve

cognitive control, they are based on correlational data from

between-subjects designs that test whether linguistic profile (i.e.,

bilingual, monolingual, dense code-switcher) is associated with

cognitive-control performance. That is, they assume population

traits. Yet correlations do not permit causal inferences, as lurking

variables (e.g., socioeconomic status, culture, etc.) may be con-

founded with the language-background factor that also contributes

to group differences. Furthermore, most bilingual studies primarily

(and unnaturally) involve exogenously cuing language switches

between isolated words and concepts without an accompanying

sentence (Gollan & Goldrick, 2018; Valdés Kroff, Guzzardo

Tamargo, & Dussias, 2018). For example, the cued language-

switching paradigm (e.g., Costa & Santesteban, 2004; Hernandez

et al., 2001; Meuter & Allport, 1999; Olson, 2016) signals via a

visual prompt (e.g., the color of the background) the language in

which bilinguals should name digits or objects. Other sentence-

level studies that use bilingual stimuli do embed code-switches in

sentential contexts, but they are often limited to single words

(Altarriba et al., 1996; Gullifer & Titone, 2019; Moreno et al.,

2002). Finally, both experimental paradigms inevitably derive

stimuli from just one grammatical class (nouns), which greatly

underestimates the broad repertoire of grammatical boundaries

where code-switches occur (Poplack, 1980). Thus, it remains un-

clear how interpreting a code-switch during more naturalistic sit-

uations (e.g., reading text) creates representational conflict as a

regular byproduct of incremental interpretation and whether this

engages cognitive control.

Preliminaries to the Present Study

Here, we manipulate linguistic context (e.g., real-time interpre-

tation of code-switched sentences vs. single-language sentences) to

test its effect on cognitive-control functioning, as measured by a

canonical Flanker task. Despite controversy about the effects of

bilingualism on cognitive control (Bialystok et al., 2009; Blumen-

feld & Marian, 2013; Kroll & Bialystok, 2013; Paap & Greenberg,

2013; Prior, Degani, Awawdy, Yassin, & Korem, 2017; Valian,

2015), surprisingly little research attempts to understand the prop-

erties of bilingualism that might adjust cognitive-control perfor-

mance in the first place. To this end, we assume that cognitive-

control activity fluctuates on the basis of various factors

(Cavanagh, Cohen, & Allen, 2009), linguistic context among them.

We therefore compare bilinguals to themselves to test whether

processing an intrasentential code-switch is a linguistic demand

that recruits cognitive control in ways that comprehending single-

language sentences does not.

Because we are studying real-time comprehension, we are not

bound to provoke switches with an arbitrary cue as is the common

(and perhaps necessary) practice in production studies, nor do we

limit code-switches to single words or grammatical categories.

Instead, we introduce ecologically valid code-switches during

reading to create cross-linguistic conflict as bilinguals read text.

Specifically, bilinguals read monolingual and code-switched sen-

tences interleaved with nonlinguistic Flanker trials. For the code-

switched stimuli, switches occurred within the sentence (as in

Example 1 earlier), and we varied the grammatical category and

location of where code-switches arose (see Appendix A). Follow-

ing the predictions of conflict adaptation, if processing code-

switched stimuli engages cognitive control, this should influence

subsequent incongruent but not congruent Flanker performance

(faster and/or more accurate responses) where the need for biased

processing is stronger, resulting in a previous by current trial type

interaction. Such a pattern would be especially consistent with

conflict adaptation in studies that show behavioral adjustments

across linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks (Hsu & Novick, 2016;

Kan et al., 2013; Thothathiri et al., 2018) and would indicate that

comprehending a code-switch regulates mental activity that biases

information processing in accordance with task-related cues.

Method

Participants

Fifty-seven adult bilingual Spanish-English speakers (40 fe-

male, Mage ⫽21, SD ⫽2.6) were recruited from the University

of Florida community. All were right-handed, healthy, and had

normal or corrected-to-normal vision. They provided written in-

formed consent, and the human subjects review board at the

University of Florida approved all experimental procedures. Sub-

jects were paid $20 total or given class credit for their participa-

tion.

In a separate session after the experiment, participants com-

pleted a battery of subjective and objective proficiency measures

following the procedure outlined in Guzzardo Tamargo et al.

(2016) and Valdés Kroff et al. (2017). These tests included an

online Language History Questionnaire; a 50-question, multiple-

choice English grammar assessment adapted from the Michigan

English Language Institute College English Test (English Lan-

guage Institute, 2001); a 50-question, multiple-choice Spanish

grammar assessment adapted from the highest level of the Di-

ploma de español como lengua extranjera [Diploma of Spanish as

a Foreign Language] (Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport of

Spain, 2006); and an English and Spanish picture-naming task (30

items each) adapted from the Boston Naming Test (Kaplan, Good-

glass, Weintraub, & Segal, 1983). This session took approximately

1 hr to complete. Descriptive statistics of the bilinguals’ profi-

ciency and demographic profiles are shown in Table 1. In addition,

participants rated their own use of code-switching on a 5-point

Likert scale, ranging from 1 (never)to5(always), giving a mean

rating of 3.39 (SD ⫽1.15). Participants in aggregate were more

English dominant, both by their own assessment and via standard-

ized assessment, reflecting at least a subset of the participants’

status as Spanish heritage speakers (i.e., first-language acquirers of

Spanish who subsequently become dominant in their second lan-

guage, English; e.g., Carter & Lynch, 2015; Prada Pérez &

Hernández, 2017). Indeed, only 16 participants had been in the

United States less than 5 years, whereas 28 were born in the United

States or arrived before 5 years of age, with the remaining six

participants having arrived in young childhood or adolescence

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4ADLER, VALDÉS KROFF, AND NOVICK

(two participants did not leave a response on the Language History

Questionnaire).

Materials and Procedure

We interspersed sentence-processing trial types and Flanker trial

types pseudorandomly to create a 2 ⫻2 design: incongruent

(conflict) or congruent (no-conflict) Flanker items on trial nfol-

lowed either code-switch or no-switch (monolingual) sentences on

trial n⫺1 (see Figure 1). Participants completed 48 critical

sentence-to-Flanker pairs: 12 no-switch-incongruent Flanker pairs,

12 no-switch-congruent Flanker pairs, 12 switch-incongruent

Flanker pairs, and 12 switch-congruent Flanker pairs. These se-

quences were embedded within a larger experimental context that

also contained 69 filler sentences and 60 additional Flanker trials,

so that there were several sentence-to-sentence, Flanker-to-

Flanker, and sentence-to-Flanker sequences, thus preventing par-

ticipants from predicting upcoming trial or even task type. We

never had more than two conflict types consecutively (e.g., incon-

gruent Flanker, code-switch, incongruent Flanker) because of a

prior report that a third incongruent trial “resets” cognitive control

and can mask conflict adaptation effects (Kim, Johnson, & Gold,

2014; for similar cross-task designs, see Hsu & Novick, 2016; Kan

et al., 2013; Thothathiri et al., 2018). We measured adaptation

effects on the Flanker task because its behavioral profile has been

studied extensively and it is widely used in studies of cognitive

control and conflict adaptation. Thus, we tested if cross-linguistic

conflict arising from code-switched sentences influences perfor-

mance, via conflict adaptation, on a standard cognitive-control task

(i.e., Flanker).

Each trial began with a central fixation cross for 500 ms (see

Figure 2). On a Flanker trial, the critical stimulus was then dis-

played for 1,000 ms or until the participant responded, whichever

came first. On a sentence-reading trial, the masked sentence was

displayed with dashes until the participant pressed the down arrow

key to reveal the first word (and every word thereafter; see below).

Finally, a blank screen was displayed during the 1,000-ms inter-

trial interval before the fixation appeared again, indicating the start

of the next trial.

Flanker task. In the Flanker task, subjects pressed the left or

right arrow key to indicate whether an arrow located in the center

of the computer screen faced left or right. On congruent (no

conflict) trials, the center arrow pointed in the same direction as

the flanking arrows (e.g., ¡¡¡¡¡). On incongruent (conflict)

trials, the center arrow pointed in the opposite direction of the

flanking arrows (e.g.,¡¡¢¡¡). Arrows were separated by .06°

of visual angle and, together, the five angles subtended a horizon-

tal visual angle of .55°.

Self-paced reading (SPR) task. Participants read sentences

one word at a time in a noncumulative moving-window procedure

Table 1

Proficiency Profile of Spanish-English Bilingual Participants

Measure English Spanish Difference

LHQ—Speaking (out of 10) 8.83 (1.8) 8.8 (1.43) n.s.

LHQ—Listening (out of 10) 9.11 (1.6) 9.37 (.94) n.s.

LHQ—Writing (out of 10) 8.8 (1.79) 7.93 (1.9)

ⴱ

LHQ—Reading (out of 10) 9.02 (1.52) 8.5 (1.5) n.s.

Grammar (out of 50) 39.8 (9.02) 33.72 (7.55)

ⴱⴱ

BNT Picture Naming (out of 30) 21.07 (5.93) 16.85 (6.25)

ⴱⴱ

Note. LHQ ⫽Language History Questionnaire; BNT ⫽Boston Naming

Test; n.s. ⫽not significant. Mean assessment scores (with standard devi-

ation) and paired t-tests on the difference between English and Spanish.

ⴱ

p⬍.05.

ⴱⴱ

p⬍.01.

A. Non-switch Æ

Congruent

C. Code-switch

Congruent

The newlyweds

bought a large house

aer their wedding in

a desirable

neighborhood.

Æ Æ Æ Æ Æ

Al principio del

semestre, the

architecture student

registered for several

courses.

Å Å Å Å Å

B. Non-switch

Incongruent

At the party, the

young woman asked

for a glass of wine

from the hostess.

Æ Æ Å Æ Æ

D. Code- switch

Incongruent

Los diputados admiten

that the judges are

making the crisis

worse.

Å Å Æ Å Å

trial n-1

trial n

trial n-1

trial n

Figure 1. Experiment design showing four critical trial sequences. (A)

Nonswitch sentence preceding a congruent Flanker trial; (B) nonswitch

sentence preceding an incongruent Flanker trial: (C) code-switched sen-

tence preceding a congruent Flanker trial; and (D) code-switched sentence

preceding an incongruent Flanker trial. Sentences were displayed using the

self-paced moving-window paradigm but are illustrated as whole sentences

here for clarity.

Figure 2. Example display sequence and timing for one sentence-Flanker

pair. Following each trial, there was an intertrial interval (ITI) of 1,000 ms,

followed by a 500-ms fixation cross and then the next trial.

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COMPREHENDING CODE-SWITCHES AND COGNITIVE CONTROL

(Just, Carpenter, & Woolley, 1982). Sentences began with a full

mask (a string of —s replacing the letters of all words) until

subjects pressed the down arrow key to begin reading word-by-

word. As each new word appeared, the prior word was again

masked. This procedure was chosen to more closely mimic the

incremental unfolding of spoken language: input toward the end of

sentences could not benefit from any preview since it was masked

until actually encountered (concealing any preview of a code-

switch was especially critical). On 50 filler trials (see below), the

sentence was followed by a yes or no comprehension question

designed to ensure that the participant was paying attention. The

comprehension question was presented in the same language as

the sentence it followed. For code-switched sentences, because the

sentences started in Spanish and ended in English, the comprehen-

sion questions were presented in English to maintain consistency

with the immediately preceding text. Comprehension probes ap-

peared 200 ms after the sentence’s offset and remained on the

screen until participants responded. They pressed the left arrow

key to indicate “no” and the right arrow key to indicate “yes.”

We generated 192 sentence “frames,” which were translated to

suit each of three language presentation modes: English only,

Spanish only, and code-switched. For the code-switched materials,

all sentences began in Spanish and ended in English because of the

preponderance of highly proficient Spanish-English bilinguals in

the United States who code-switch in this language direction

(Herring, Deuchar, Parafita Couto, & Moro Quintanilla, 2010;

Moreno et al., 2002; Valdés Kroff, 2016; Valdés Kroff et al., 2018;

cf. Blokzijl, Deuchar, & Parafita Couto, 2017). This switch direc-

tion is more natural because it reflects the code-switching practices

among the U.S. Spanish-English bilinguals that we test, that is, it

is the type of switching that they are accustomed to. Crucially, the

location of the code-switch varied unpredictably across items:

code-switches occurred between two and 13 words from the end of

the sentence (mean location ⫽7 words from end of sentence) and

were balanced across six grammatical categories that are attested

code-switch sites in Spanish-English code-switching (verb, noun,

complementizer/conjunction, preposition, determiner, auxiliary/in-

finitive; Belazi, Rubin, & Toribio, 1994; Di Sciullo, Muysken, &

Singh, 1986; Poplack, 1980; see Appendix A). Thus, type and

location of code-switch was not a manipulated variable by design,

in order to preserve an element of ecological validity (i.e., in

naturalistic speech or text, bilinguals switch in myriad ways and

grammatical positions, as presented here). Consequently, there was

no direct comparison between a code-switched region and a cor-

responding one in the monolingual sentences because the construc-

tions were unique (e.g., if a sentence code-switched into an English

preposition toward the end of a sentence, there was no equivalent

monolingual sentence that would have been matched in form,

length, or position).

Stimuli were administered in E-prime (Version 2.0.10.353, Psy-

chology Software Tools, Pittsburgh, PA). Participants completed a

total of 225 trials: 108 Flanker trials (27 congruent left, 27 con-

gruent right, 27 incongruent left, and 27 incongruent right) and 117

sentence trials. Of these, 65 trials were monolingual sentences and

52 were code-switched sentences.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of four lists. In List 1,

all monolingual sentences appeared in English and in List 2, all

monolingual sentences appeared in Spanish. We generated Lists 3 and

4 by rotating the critical 48 sentence items across conditions (e.g.,

sentences from List 1 that preceded congruent Flanker trials now

preceded incongruent Flanker trials in List 3; and sentences from List

2 that preceded congruent Flanker trials now preceded incongruent

Flanker trials in List 4). We manipulated the language in which the

monolingual sentences were presented across lists for the following

reason: Because our conflict adaptation design aimed to pinpoint

immediate effects of code-switching on cognitive-control perfor-

mance, this allowed us to test whether conflict adaptation results from

code-switching specifically, or whether cognitive control performance

is also (unexpectedly) modulated by the language/dominance of the

monolingual sentences on the preceding trial type. In addition, includ-

ing a list that used only Spanish monolingual sentences allowed us to

obscure the code-switching manipulation. In the list with only English

monolingual items, any sentence that began in Spanish would signal

the presence of an upcoming code-switch (into English), which could

induce strategies even though the participants would not be able to

predict when or where in the sentence the code-switch would occur.

To minimize the impact of such demand characteristics on our data,

we compare effects across lists, expecting to find conflict adaptation

that does not interact with list (and that results from code-switches on

trial n⫺1). Participants completed 22 practice trials prior to the

experiment: 16 Flanker trials and six SPR trials.

Data Analysis

We collected response times (RTs) and accuracy on the Flanker

task and, by default, RTs to read each word (measured by self-paced

button presses between words) on the SPR trials. However, we

present only descriptive statistics on the SPR data as no linguistic

manipulation was introduced. Differences in lexical properties of

English and Spanish (e.g., Spanish words are longer on average than

English words) also make the monolingual and code-switched sen-

tences difficult to compare, as does the different rate at which bilin-

guals read in each language. To ensure that our participants were

completing the task as intended, we recorded readers’ accuracy on the

comprehension questions for the filler trials as a measure of sustained

attention throughout the experiment.

Flanker RT and accuracy analyses were conducted in R (Ver-

sion 3.2.2; R Core Team, 2017) using the lme4 package (Bates,

Mächler, Bolker, & Walker, 2015). For Flanker RTs, a linear

mixed effects model was constructed, with prior sentence type,

current Flanker trial type, and their interaction as fixed effects, and

subject as a random intercept. Only correct trials were included in

the RT analyses, and RTs were log-transformed prior to analysis to

correct for non-normal distribution. Accuracy data were analyzed

using mixed effects logistic regression. Again, prior sentence type,

current Flanker trial type, and their interaction were included as

fixed effects, and subject was included as a random intercept. The

lmerTest package was used to compute pvalues using Satterth-

waite’s approximation for denominator degrees of freedom (Kuz-

netsova, Brockhoff, & Christensen, 2017).

Results

Manipulation Checks and Confirmatory Analyses

Flanker task. We first included the language of the mono-

lingual sentences (English vs. Spanish lists) as a fixed effect in

the models to determine whether list had any unexpected impact

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6ADLER, VALDÉS KROFF, AND NOVICK

on the results. Namely, because subjects assigned to lists with

English monolingual (congruent) sentences could theoretically

prepare for a switch whenever a sentence began in Spanish (it

was guaranteed to switch to English, although where was un-

predictable because we purposefully varied the syntactic site of

the code-switch and whether the code-switch occurred early or

late), we wanted to be sure that any adaptation effects are not

larger in such lists that could be ascribed to strategies and

learning, instead of cognitive control. Crucially, list did not

result in any main effects or interactions with previous and

current trial types for accuracy or RT (ps⬎.88), and inspection

of the means confirms this (for details, see Appendix B). All

experimental results reported below for Flanker performance

therefore collapse across Spanish and English sentences into a

single no-switch variable on preceding trial type. The lack of

interaction with list suggests that any effects we observe in the

experimental analyses resembling conflict adaptation cannot

easily be ascribed to predictability.

In addition, although we do not compare reading times between

code-switched and monolingual sentences, we do report some

descriptive statistics on overall reading times from the SPR task.

First, we aimed to confirm that participants in the English list did

not read code-switched sentences faster because they always

started in Spanish and could thus predict a switch. This pattern

would corroborate our inference above. We also aimed to deter-

mine whether language dominance influenced reading rate.

SPR task. We report mean RTs by word separated by the

language of the monolingual sentences (English vs. Spanish).

Between lists, overall mean RTs were similar:

when monolingual

sentences were English, the mean RT per word was 389 ms (SD ⫽

131); when monolingual sentences were Spanish, the mean RT per

word was 493 ms (SD ⫽221). When broken down by sentence

type, for the English lists, English monolingual sentences had a

mean RT per word of 369 ms (SD ⫽137) whereas the mean for

code-switched sentences was 409 ms (SD ⫽122). For the Spanish

lists, Spanish monolingual sentences were read with a mean RT

per word of 493 ms (SD ⫽199), and code-switched sentences with

a mean RT of 493 ms (SD ⫽242).

We also examined mean RTs by word split by list, sentence

type, and dominance as a way to inspect whether reading rate was

affected by language dominance (as expected) and whether par-

ticipants in the English list demonstrated facilitation (i.e., antici-

pation) for reading code-switches because they were uniquely

signaled by beginning in Spanish. In both lists, participants read

faster when language dominance matched language list (in English

lists, English-dominant group mean RT ⫽371 ms [SD ⫽121] vs.

Spanish-dominant group mean RT ⫽424 ms [SD ⫽144]; in

Spanish lists, English-dominant group mean RT ⫽517 ms [SD ⫽

141] vs. Spanish-dominant group mean RT ⫽473 ms [SD ⫽

269]). The difference between code-switched and monolingual

sentences was in all cases less than 10 ms except for the English-

dominant group, which was slower when reading code-switched

sentences (mean RT ⫽404 ms, SD ⫽128) as compared to reading

English sentences (mean RT ⫽338 ms, SD ⫽103). As can be

seen, participants did not evince an overall advantage in reading

code-switched sentences, even when distinctively prompted by the

presence of Spanish early in the sentence. For full descriptive

results, see Appendix B.

Experimental Analyses

Nine participants with accuracy rates below 80% on the SPR

comprehension questions were removed from analyses; we thus

analyzed data from 48 subjects. Flanker trials with RTs beyond 2.5

SDs from the overall mean were removed (1.95% of all trials).

As our main interest is determining the effect of language

context on cognitive control, our dependent measures were RT and

accuracy on the Flanker task.

Flanker RT. We analyzed Flanker RT data for correct trials

only (98.1% of the full dataset). Participants were faster overall on

congruent trials (M⫽561 ms, SE ⫽16) compared to incongruent

trials (M⫽655 ms, SE ⫽17), resulting in a main effect of Flanker

trial congruency (␤⫽⫺0.083, SE ⫽0.004, t⫽⫺19.14, p⬍.0001).

But, did the manipulation of prior sentence-trial type modulate this

pattern? As can be seen in Figure 3A, subjects were faster on incon-

gruent Flanker items that followed code-switched (M⫽648 ms,

SE ⫽17) as compared to no-switch (monolingual) sentences (M⫽

662 ms, SE ⫽18), but this sentence manipulation did not influence

performance on congruent Flanker items. This observation was con-

firmed by a significant Previous Trial (Sentence Type) ⫻Current

Trial (Flanker Type) interaction (␤⫽⫺0.009, SE ⫽0.004,

t⫽⫺1.99, p⬍.05), consistent with conflict adaptation. The findings

suggest that detecting a code-switch triggers sustained cognitive-

control engagement, which facilitates conflict-resolution performance

on a subsequent nonverbal Flanker task.

We followed-up with an analysis that included experimental

half as a fixed effect to determine whether conflict adaptation

increased over time as monitoring demands theoretically escalated

throughout the experimental session, because more code-switching

occurred (Figure 3B). Indeed, we found a significant three-way

interaction among previous sentence type, current flanker type,

and session half (␤⫽0.011, SE ⫽0.004, t⫽2.47, p⬍.05).

This interaction was the result of a reliable conflict adaptation

effect in the second half of the experiment (␤⫽⫺0.02, SE ⫽

0.006, t⫽⫺3.25, p⬍.01) but not in the first (␤⫽0.003, SE ⫽

0.007, t⫽0.480, p⬎.05). Thus, even though bilinguals could

anticipate more switching as time wore on, this pattern contra-

dicts the assumption that such predictions will necessarily al-

leviate cognitive-control demands. Because we administered a

wide range of switch types and locations to preserve natural-

ness, we believe instead that the pressure to rebias processing in

favor of representations in the “new” language may have accrued

(clearly, it does not dissipate at least), even as a reader realizes that

she will face an increasing number of code-switches. In fact, this

interaction with time may reveal that the reader is more apt to

implement control despite (or because of) the rising need to

integrate a switch. We return to this idea in the Discussion.

Flanker accuracy. Overall, participants were more accurate

on congruent trials (M⫽99.61%, SE ⫽0.90) than incongruent

trials (M⫽95.92%, SE ⫽2.86). This difference was statistically

significant (␤⫽1.58, SE ⫽0.34, t⫽4.67, p⬍.0001). However,

there was no significant effect of prior trial type (p⬎.05), nor an

interaction between current and previous trial type (p⬎.05),

perhaps because of near-ceiling effects, even on incongruent trials.

Because of programming error across a couple of lists, two sentence

items were removed from analyses, which affected 26 subjects.

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COMPREHENDING CODE-SWITCHES AND COGNITIVE CONTROL

Discussion

We investigated whether there is heightened use of cognitive

control when processing code-switched sentences in real time. The

findings show that if a bilingual had just encountered a code-

switch during incremental sentence processing, her performance

on the following incongruent Flanker trial was more efficient

compared to when she had just encountered a monolingual sen-

tence (no switch). Such temporal interdependence is consistent

with conflict adaptation and suggests that encountering a code-

switch during real-time interpretation recruits domain-general

cognitive-control procedures, presumably to bias processing to-

ward representations from the switched-into language (thereby

resolving competition from representations in the other language).

This finding parallels those from previous studies showing a

cause-and-effect relationship between the resolution of linguistic

conflict and the dynamic engagement of cognitive control to revise

misinterpretations (Hsu & Novick, 2016; Kan et al., 2013;

Thothathiri et al., 2018). Here, we show that cognitive-control

mechanisms are mobilized in the same causal fashion when a

bilingual comprehender must integrate a code-switch.

Our results contribute new insight into what processing demands of

bilingualism might dynamically modulate cognitive-control perfor-

mance. Recently, bilingualism research has taken a nuanced view of

how a bilingual’s experience with her two languages generates the use

of different control processes and, thus, mixed advantages in cognitive

control (e.g., Adaptive Control Hypothesis, Green & Abutalebi,

2013). For example, bilinguals who report frequent switching be-

tween languages enjoy advantages over less frequent switchers and

monolinguals (Hofweber et al., 2016; Prior & Gollan, 2011; Verreyt,

Woumans, Vandelanotte, Szmalec, & Duyck, 2016). Moreover, indi-

vidual differences in cognitive-control can affect parallel language

activation by reducing later stage cross-language phonological com-

petition (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2013) or interlingual homograph

interference (Pivneva, Mercier, & Titone, 2014). Yet it was previ-

ously unknown whether interpreting a language switch during incre-

mental processing is itself a cognitive-control task, because across-

group comparisons (and indeed, across-individual comparisons) are

not designed to address this issue. The finding reported here reveals a

relationship between bilingual sentence processing and cognitive-

control engagement within individuals and addresses the problem of

how to link linguistic and nonlinguistic mechanisms. Our results

suggest that how bilinguals engage with their languages may be

central to any potential differences with monolinguals and even with

other bilingual speakers.

Crucially though, increased cognitive-control functioning is clearly

not a static property or trait of bilingualism just by virtue of being

bilingual per se. Rather, cognitive control performance can be

“pushed around” depending on the status of linguistic context and

whether the input, at any given moment, generates representational

conflict and, thus, demands more or less cognitive control to bias

processing. This notion connects to other work indicating that the

proportion of incongruent trials in a Flanker task (Costa, Hernández,

Costa-Faidella, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009) or the proportion of cued

language switch trials (Olson, 2016) affects performance: greater

overall conflict induces greater monitoring and control. Whether this

“state effect” yields performance advantages in general is, however,

an open empirical issue for others to settle (for a review, see Bia-

lystok, 2017).

Our contribution is a more detailed and theoretically guided

notion of how bilingual processing demands may adjust cognitive-

control performance. Akin to how monolinguals’ resolution of

syntactic ambiguity during processing recruits cognitive control

(e.g., Hsu & Novick, 2016; January, Trueswell, & Thompson-

Schill, 2009; Novick et al., 2005), we show that when bilinguals

encounter code-switches during real-time interpretation, this in-

creases engagement of cognitive control mechanisms. Neverthe-

less, we do not equate interpreting code-switches in real-time with

the reanalysis necessary to resolve (temporary) syntactic ambigu-

ity, but there are clear processing commonalities. For example,

both situations pressure the parsing system to handle representa-

tional conflict and thus bias competition to relevant cues and away

from irrelevant ones that will enable accurate characterization of

linguistic input, a rather cognitive-control demanding affair.

Cognitive Control and Code-Switching: Connection to

Prior Work

Green and Abutalebi (2013) articulated three different bilingual

language contexts—single language, dual language, and dense code-

switching—that tap into different aspects of executive functioning.

They hypothesize that dual-language contexts, where both languages

are copresent in society and thus frequent switching is necessary (e.g.,

in Barcelona, Spain), impose the greatest conflict monitoring and

Figure 3. Mean response time (RT) for Flanker type as a function of the

prior sentence trial (code-switched vs. not). (A) All trials; (B) Split by

experimental half. Error bars represent standard errors. INC ⫽incongru-

ent; CON ⫽congruent; CS ⫽code-switch; NS ⫽nonswitch; n.s. ⫽not

significant. Log-transformed RTs were used for analysis, but raw RTs are

shown here for clarity.

ⴱ

p⬍.05.

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8ADLER, VALDÉS KROFF, AND NOVICK

response inhibition. By contrast, dense code-switchers are better op-

portunistic planners, who “mak[e] use of whatever comes most read-

ily to hand in order to achieve a goal” (Green & Abutalebi, 2013, p.

519). In view of our results, this adaptive control framework can be

updated to describe how comprehending code-switched speech and

text increases demands on cognitive control and what implications

this carries for performance. In particular, this and other similar

proposals (Green & Wei, 2014; Treffers-Daller, 2009) emphasize the

cognitive costs of producing code-switched speech, which may vary

by the type of code-switch (e.g., inter- vs. intrasentential; insertional,

alternational, congruent lexicalization, Muysken, 2000), whether the

bilingual is in a more monolingual versus bilingual “mode” (e.g.,

Blanco-Elorrieta & Pylkkänen, 2017; Olson, 2016), and the familiar-

ity that a bilingual has with code-switching (Beatty-Martínez &

Dussias, 2017; Valdés Kroff, Guzzardo Tamargo, & Dussias, 2018).

Potentially, producing code-switches may actually lead to reduced

control demands, essentially facilitating access to the more available

language (e.g., Gollan & Ferreira, 2009; Kleinman & Gollan, 2016).

That is, switching is part of a speaker’s own planning process, and

speakers’ production choices depend largely on what is linguistically

(Bock, 1986b), conceptually (Bock, 1986a), and attentionally acces-

sible to them (e.g., Gleitman, January, Nappa, & Trueswell, 2007).

Consequently, they may subsequently plan for upcoming code-

switches if it is an expedient way of achieving a linguistic goal.

In contrast, a comprehender does not know when a code-switch

may occur, although she may be guided by linguistic and extralin-

guistic cues such as slight modifications in speech rate, morpho-

syntactic regularities, or pragmatic contexts (Fricke et al., 2016;

Guzzardo Tamargo et al., 2016; Valdés Kroff et al., 2017, 2018). Our

suggestion is that during comprehension, a reader or listener must be

prepared sometimes to override expectations that sentences will con-

tinue in the same language (particularly if they have not just used

code-switching as a communicative device themselves; Fricke &

Kootstra, 2016), and to resolve competing cross-linguistic represen-

tations that inevitably arise at multiple levels (lexically, phonologi-

cally, and grammatically) when a switch does occur. Cognitive-

control procedures might engage to bias processing toward relevant

informational cues (those arriving in the new language) and resolve

the cross-linguistic conflict that allows representations from both

languages to be seamlessly integrated, resulting in accurate (and more

efficient) comprehension despite the switch.

Our work provides initial evidence in favor of this hypothesis, yet

we should not gloss over potential differences in how the syntactic site

of the code-switch and when the code-switch is encountered affect

sentence processing. Here, we remained agnostic to where a code-

switch occurs within a sentence. We selected syntactic junctures that

have broad attestation in Spanish-English code-switching (e.g., Belazi

et al., 1994; Poplack, 1980), and we varied when in the sentence (e.g.,

early, middle, late) a code-switch could occur. Yet certainly some

code-switches may be more “expected” than others and consequently

may require less cognitive control in comprehension. For example,

linguists make a distinction between inter- and intrasentential code-

switches which take the sentence (i.e., Complementizer Phrase) as a

major clause boundary demarcating two classes of code-switches

(Bullock & Toribio, 2009). This classification corresponds with bi-

lingual proficiency, affecting the type of code-switch that bilinguals

are more likely to produce (e.g., Miccio, Scheffner-Hammer, & Ro-

dríguez, 2009), and the ease with which these structures are processed

(e.g., Byers-Heinlein, Morin-Lessard, & Lew-Williams, 2017). Bilin-

guals who are highly proficient engage more successfully in fluid and

intricate code-switching that can occur within a major clause bound-

ary (i.e., intrasentential code-switching) whereas less proficient bilin-

guals are more likely to produce intersentential and single word

code-switches. We envision future studies teasing apart these distinc-

tions to test their relative effect on cognitive control.

Because previous results demonstrate that code-switching can be

costly, resulting in increased reading times (e.g., Altarriba et al., 1996)

or neuro-cognitive components associated with unexpectancy

(Moreno et al., 2002), one might have reasonably expected that

Flanker performance would be worse following a code-switch com-

pared to sentences that did not contain a switch—that is, consistent

with “more caution” after an unexpected switch. However, our find-

ing of improved performance is perfectly consistent with theories of

cognitive control. For instance, conflict monitoring theory suggests

that the presence of information-conflict in the environment prepares

the system to engage cognitive control to bias attention when neces-

sary in the future (Botvinick, Nystrom, Fissell, Carter, & Cohen,

1999). One outcome of this architecture is that conflict detection

adjusts behavior by tuning the system to attend to task-relevant over

task-irrelevant information, which assists the resolution of other in-

stances of conflict to be more effective (Botvinick et al., 1999;

Gratton et al., 1992; Kerns et al., 2004). What is interesting in the

current experiment is that there is no shared feature across stimuli or

even goals in the two tasks (e.g., to report an arrow’s direction; to

understand a code-switched sentence), yet a common process appears

to operate over the distinct representations when conflict arises in

each task. Here, detecting a code-switch on one trial increases demand

to bias processing toward task-relevant input (representations in the

current language), which in turn primes information-processing on an

ensuing (Flanker) task also to bias goal-appropriate information (at-

tend to the central arrow; ignore the surrounding ones despite their

attraction).

Demands for Control Despite Switching Predictability

One could argue that maintaining the direction of the code-switch

as always from Spanish to English in this study may have cued

participants in the English monolingual sentence list to prepare for a

code-switch; that is, when seeing that the sentence begins with Span-

ish the participant will know that a code-switch will occur. However,

where and exactly when the code-switches will emerge is unpredict-

able because we purposefully varied the syntactic site of the code-

switch as well as whether the code-switch occurs earlier or later in the

sentence. Thus, there is still ambiguity about the timing of a switch

(because multiple sites are grammatical, and many of those sites are

sampled in this experiment). As such, a switch should still generate a

conflict (or rebiasing) signal, and arguably even more so if monitoring

demands are higher (e.g., Costa et al., 2009; Gollan & Ferreira, 2009;

Olson, 2016). That we find no interaction with list suggests that

regardless of predictability, cognitive control is still upregulated fol-

lowing a code-switch, at least in the current experimental context (for

more details on RT by list and dominance, see Appendix B). We also

note that the three-way interaction with time, which shows the adap-

tation increases in the second half of the experiment, itself argues

against increased predictability in the English lists. That is, in the

second half of the experiment, participants know that code-switching

is likely—yet they still exhibit adaptation presumably because

monitoring demands are heightened over the course of the

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

COMPREHENDING CODE-SWITCHES AND COGNITIVE CONTROL

study. Moreover, we reiterate that participants completed 48

critical sentence-to-Flanker pairs: 12 no-switch-incongruent

Flanker pairs, 12 no-switch-congruent Flanker pairs, 12 switch-

incongruent Flanker pairs, and 12 switch-congruent Flanker

pairs. These sequences were embedded within a larger set of

items that contained 69 filler sentences and 60 additional

Flanker trials, so that there were several sentence-to-sentence,

Flanker-to-Flanker, and sentence-to-Flanker sequences that pre-

vented participants from predicting upcoming trial or even task

type, which also likely masked manipulations of interest.

Finally, our results may inform a paradox in the processing of

code-switched speech and text. Despite its ubiquity worldwide among

bilingual communities, the processing of code-switches inevitably

leads to measurable switch costs in the laboratory (e.g., Altarriba et

al., 1996; Moreno et al., 2002). Whereas current psycholinguistic

debates on code-switching argue about whether these costs can be

eliminated or attenuated (Beatty-Martínez & Dussias, 2017; Litcofsky

& Van Hell, 2017; Moreno et al., 2002; Valdés Kroff et al., 2018), a

more fruitful avenue may be to reconsider switch costs as an optimal

trade-off that can, on balance, lead to performance benefits. In other

words, it may be that code-switches are hard to predict as linguistic

input unfolds in a single language or that the bilingual is unsure of

whether a sentence will continue in the same language or code-switch

into another. This momentary uncertainty may lead to behaviorally

observable slow-downs in integration (i.e., switch costs), but such

costs, in turn, may also reflect a bilingual’s ramping up of cognitive-

control processes.

Closing Remarks

Incremental language processing often engenders conflict between

incompatible representations of sentence meaning. During real-time

comprehension, readers and listeners commit to a single interpretation

among multiple possibilities at points of local ambiguity in the input;

but sometimes, these commitments must be revised when later-

arriving cues clash with initial analyses. Previous work demonstrates

that the discovery of a misanalysis rapidly recruits conflict-resolution

and cognitive-control mechanisms to prevent comprehension failure

(Hsu & Novick, 2016; Kan et al., 2013; Thothathiri et al., 2018). This

background provided a basis for testing the hypothesis that bilinguals

must resolve cross-linguistic conflict that arises in the natural course

of processing code-switches during moment-to-moment comprehen-

sion. Much like other forms of linguistic conflict, we showed that

integrating a code-switch in real time also engages cognitive control,

theoretically to assist with regulating interpretations and achieving

communicative success. We argue that explicating the processing

demands of bilingualism that might create contact with domain-

general cognitive-control systems is a critical component to under-

standing the architecture of the bilingual mind. We take an important

step toward that goal by applying an established theoretical account

(the cognitive control and parsing account) to address questions about

the role cognitive control plays in bilingual sentence processing.

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(Appendices follow)

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

COMPREHENDING CODE-SWITCHES AND COGNITIVE CONTROL

Appendix A

Monolingual and Code-Switched Sentence Materials

Table A1

Sentence Materials

Item Sentence

Monolingual sentences

1 Afortunadamente el sofá en la puerta está en perfectas condiciones en comparación con otros muebles.

Luckily the sofa by the door is in perfect condition compared to the other furniture.

2 Al principio del semestre la estudiante de arquitectura se registró en varios cursos.

At the beginning of the semester the architecture student registered for several courses.

3 Desde el verano pasado el jardinero siempre ve a la mujer paseando por la fuente.

Since last summer the gardener frequently sees the woman walking by the fountain.

4 En la fiesta la joven pidió una copa de vino de la anfitriona.

At the party the young woman asked for a glass of wine from the hostess.

5 Los estudiantes de posgrado notan que el curso de matemáticas avanzadas se cancela mucho.

The graduate students have observed that the advanced math course is usually cancelled.

6 El decano no está seguro si la beca es para cinco años.

The dean is not certain if the fellowship is for five years.

7 El agente dice que los turistas están disfrutando del crucero que los llevó a México.

The agent says that the tourists are enjoying the cruise that took them to Mexico.

8 El rey confirma que el palacio se completa a finales de verano.

The king confirms that the palace will be completed by the end of summer.

9 Los diputados admiten que los jueces están empeorando la crisis.

The congressmen admit that the judges are making the crisis worse.

10 El entrenador intentó de cambiar el horario del equipo para el próximo partido.

The coach tried to change his team schedule for the next match.

11 Los obreros dudan que el nuevo estadio se complete en dos años.

The construction workers doubt that the new stadium will be completed in two years.

12 La actriz acusa a los empleados del hotel elegante de no respetar a los clientes.

The actress accuses the employees at the fancy hotel of not respecting their customers.

13 El cura no pudo dormir anoche porque el perro del vecino ladró toda la noche.

The priest could not sleep last night because the neighbor dog barked all night.

14 Después de jugar en los columpios los niños corrieron alegremente a su casa.

After playing on the swings the children happily ran towards their house.

15 La bibliotecaria del colegio decidió irse a Polonia a finales del año escolar.

The school librarian decided to go to Poland at the end of the school year.

16 Todas las mañanas el granjero ordeña las vacas en la granja roja.

Every morning the farmer milks the cows in the red barn.

17 Cuando la alumna se graduó del instituto consiguió todo lo que pidió.

When the student graduated from high school she received everything that she asked for.

18 El abogado está agradecido por el apoyo que recibió del testigo.

The lawyer is thankful for the support that he recieved from the witness.

19 El taxista tomó un desvío en vez de cruzar la carretera a estas horas.

The taxi driver took a detour instead of crossing the highway at this hour.

20 La psíquica pronosticó que el hombre consiguiera riqueza y éxito.

The psychic predicted that the man would gain wealth and success.

21 El gato tricolor no pudo atrapar el ratón porque se metió dentro del agujero.

The calico cat couldn’t catch the mouse because it ran into a hole.

22 Después de que el chef inauguró su restaurante dejó de cocinar por sí mismo.

After the chef opened his restaurant he stopped cooking for himself.

23 Los niños del barrio vendieron diez copas de limonada en menos de una hora.

The neighborhood children sold ten cups of lemonade in under an hour.

24 El futbolista marcó el gol de la victoria en el último minuto del partido.

The soccer player scored the winning goal in the last minute of the game.

25 El césped está disparejo porque la cortadora se rompió en medio de cortar el pasto.

The lawn is uneven because the lawnmower broke in the middle of cutting the grass.

(Appendices continue)

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

14 ADLER, VALDÉS KROFF, AND NOVICK

Table A1 (continued)

Item Sentence

26 Aunque el letrero prohíbe dejar bicicletas en la entrada se encuentran tres bicicletas encadenadas allí.

Although the sign prohibits leaving bikes near the entrance three bikes are chained there.

27 Los dueños nuevos decidieron derrumbar la casa vieja y construir una nueva.

The new owners decided to bulldoze the old house and build a brand new one.

28 Es más fácil conseguir un buen trabajo después de la universidad si uno conoce programación.

It easier to get a job after college if you are skilled with computers.

29 Colocaron letreros por toda la comunidad advirtiendo el uso de pesticidas en el pasto.

Signs are posted around the community warning about the use of pesticides on the grass.

30 Las raíces del árbol se extendieron por los senderos y tropiezan a la gente.

The tree roots have extended across the paths and are making people trip.

31 Los seguidores se animaron cuando el jugador quitó la pelota del otro equipo.

The fans cheered when the player stole the ball from the other team.

32 Mientras que viajaban los turistas dejaron sus pasaportes dentro de su cuarto de hotel.

While traveling the tourists left their passports inside of their hotel room.

33 El museo de arte está estrenando una nueva exposición de un pintor famoso.

The art museum is displaying a new exhibit by a famous painter.

34 Un estudio reciente reveló que la dieta popular realmente perjudica la salud.

A recent study showed that the popular diet was actually harmful to people health.

35 Durante la tormenta el viento sopló la rama de un árbol hacia un cable eléctrico.

During the storm the wind blew a tree branch into a power line.

36 Cuando lo terminó el artista grabó su nombre debajo del mural en la municipalidad.

Once he had finished the artist engraved his name below the mural in town hall.

37 La niña cariñosa adoptó al gatito enfermo y lo cuidó hasta que se repuso.

The affectionate girl adopted the sick kitten and nursed it back to health.

38 El alcalde animó a los ciudadanos a utilizar los buses para luchar contra la contaminación.

The mayor encouraged citizens to use buses in order to fight pollution.

39 Los padres compraron una tarjeta de regalo para la maestra a fin de año.

The parents bought a gift card for the teacher at the end of the year.

40 El jabón no fue suficiente para quitar la mancha de vino tinto de la alfombra.

The soap was not enough to remove the red wine stain from the carpet.

41 La recepcionista de la oficina se cayó en el pasillo durante la tormenta extrema.

The receptionist at the office fell in the hallway during the fierce storm.

42 El retrato era tan bello que el médico decidió colgarlo en la pared.

The portrait was so beautiful the doctor decided to hang it on the wall.

43 Los vecinos chismearon sobre el desconocido misterioso de la próxima cuadra.

The neighbors gossiped about the mysterious stranger from the next block.

44 El pescador esperó tres meses para trabajar después del naufragio desafortunado.

The fisherman waited three months to work after the unfortunate shipwreck.

45 Los contemporáneos del conductor notan aunque es extravagante es sin duda brillante.

Contemporaries of the composer note that although he is eccentric he is undeniably brilliant.

46 Mientras que el toro cargaba el matador se sintió poderoso por los ánimos del público.

As the bull charged the matador felt empowered by the cheers of the crowd.

47 La profesora pudo olvidarse de su trabajo y sentirse relajada mientras cuidaba el jardín.

The professor was able to forget work and feel relaxed while tending her garden.

48 El cocinero volteaba las tortillas con ambas manos pero solo firmaba con su mano derecha.

The cook flipped omelets with either hand but only signed with his right hand.

49 El bibliotecario habló por tantas horas que impidió al grupo de estudio completar su tarea.

The librarian talked for hours which prevented the study group from doing their homework.

50 Las esculturas en el césped impresionaron a la pareja durante el recorrido por la casa.

The sculptures on the lawn impressed the couple during the house tour.

51 Distraído por un problema desafiante el matemático se pegó con la esquina de su escritorio.

Distracted by a challenging problem the mathematician hit himself on the corner of his desk.

52 Cada miércoles el camión blindado pasa por el pueblo y hace varias paradas.

Every Wednesday the armored truck drives through the town and makes several stops.

53 El dueño estaba furioso cuando los manifestantes se detuvieron en frente de la tienda.

The owner was furious when the protesters stopped in front of the store.

(Appendices continue)

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

COMPREHENDING CODE-SWITCHES AND COGNITIVE CONTROL

Table A1 (continued)

Item Sentence

54 La pianista profesional no se encogió cuando sonó el móvil de un miembro del público.

The professional pianist did not flinch when an audience member cell phone rang.

55 El cómico inexperto estaba emocionado de representar el comienzo del programa.

The inexperienced comedian was thrilled to perform the opening act of the show.

56 Cuando el aire está sumamente seco con vientos fuertes los incendios son una amenaza grave.

When the air is especially dry with strong winds fires are a serious threat.

57 La arrogancia y avaricia de la banda crecía con la publicación de cada entrevista nueva.

The band arrogance and greed grew with the publication of each new interview.

58 La nueva arrendataria colgó su cartel favorito en el salón de su apartamento.

The new tenant hung her favorite poster in the living room of her apartment.

59 Para aumentar ventas para su cliente el consejero sugirió que colocara anuncios en la red.

To increase sales for his client the consultant suggested placing ads on the internet.

60 Los aventureros estaban todos enfermos en la primera noche de la excursión.

The adventurers were all sick on the first night of the excursion.

61 El nuevo libro del escritor era muy similar a otro libro recién publicado.

The author new book was very similar to another recently published book.

62 El riel de cortina es demasiado largo para las ventanas de la casa nueva.

The curtain rod is too long for the windows in the new house.

63 La mamá agotada recogió los juguetes del bebé que estaban desparramados por el piso.

The exhausted mother gathered the infant toys that were scattered across the floor.

64 El novio tuvo éxito en su tercer intento de ganar un premio en el circo.

The boyfriend was successful on his third attempt to win a prize at the circus.

65 La escuela de artes ofrece cursos baratos de arte que son abiertos al público.

The art school offers inexpensive art classes that are open to the public.

Code-switched sentences

1 Asombrosamente el detective encontró el violín que perdió en el south of Italy.

“Surprisingly, the detective found the violin that he lost in the south of Italy.”

2 El horno de mi apartamento es definitivamente eléctrico to save energy.

“The oven from my apartment is definitely electric to save energy.”

3 Realmente la silla de la cocina está sellada porque los owners bought it yesterday.

“Actually, the chair from the kitchen is sealed because the owners bought it yesterday.”

4 Honestamente la catedral que vimos se vio impresionante but it was not ancient.

“Honestly, the cathedral that we saw yesterday was impressive but it was not ancient.”

5 Cada domingo el veterinario va al parque zoológico to visit the animals.

“Each Sunday the vet goes to the zoological park to visit the animals.”

6 En nochebuena el grupo de amigos compraron mucha bebida to celebrate.

“On Christmas Eve, the group of friends bought a lot of alcohol to celebrate.”

7 Cuando el niño cariñoso tiene tiempo escribe una letter to his grandparents.

“When the caring child has time, he writes a letter to his grandparents.”

8 Porque se lo merecía su mother sent her a birthday gift.

“Because she deserved it, her mother sent her a birthday gift.”

9 El mes que viene la enfermera se va de vacaciones to the Caribbean island.

“In the upcoming month the nurse will go on vacation to the Caribbean island.”

10 Los maestros aseguran que los estudiantes de español respect them in the classroom.

“The teachers assure that the Spanish students respect them in the classroom.”

11 Los científicos saben que los experimentos are increasing the expenses.

“The scientists know that the experiments are increasing the expenses.”

12 El mesero está preocupado porque su compañero is frequently sick.

“The waiter is worried because his coworker is frequently sick.”

13 La madre sabe que los chicos fueron al parque to play soccer.

“The mother knows that the kids went to the park to play soccer.”

14 La secretaria confirmó que el nuevo hotel de playa will be completed next May.

“The secretary confirmed that the new beach hotel will be completed next May.”

15 El autor supuso que los empleados de la librería were selling his book.

“The author imagined that the employees from the bookstore were selling his book.”

16 El técnico sabe que las torres están mejorando phone calls in the area.

“The technician knows that the towers are improving phone calls in the area.”

(Appendices continue)

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

16 ADLER, VALDÉS KROFF, AND NOVICK

Table A1 (continued)

Item Sentence

17 El astrónomo confirma que los asteroides are changing the weather.

“The astronomer confirms that the asteroids are changing the weather.”

18 Inconscientemente el piloto ansioso cerró la puerta before grabbing the keys.

“Unwittingly the anxious pilot closed the door before grabbing the keys.”

19 El nuevo cliente no dejó mucha propina for the desperate hairdresser.

“The new client did not leave a lot of tip for the desperate hairdresser.”

20 El panadero amasó la masa al mismo tiempo que the telephone rang.

“The baker kneaded the dough at the same time that the telephone rang.”

21 Todas las modelos rodearon a la diseñadora al end of the show.

“All of the models surrounded the designer at the end of the show.”

22 La temperatura estaba puesta muy alta entonces el abrigo shrank in the dryer.

“The temperature was set too high so the coat shrank in the dryer.”

23 Una de las patas de la mesa es más pequeña so it always wobbles.

“One of the table legs is shorter so it always wobbles.”

24 No pudimos ver la televisión por el apagón but we played cards.

“We could not watch television because of the blackout but we played cards.”

25 El vendedor convenció a la pareja que compraran una aspiradora for their new apartment.

“The salesman convinced the couple that they should be a vacuum cleaner for their new apartment.”

26 Por desgracia el cajero se equivocó con el cambio del cliente and was quickly fired.

“Unfortunately the cashier made a mistake with the client’s change and was quickly fired.”

27 El piloto aterrizó el avión en el campo porque la pista was covered in ice.

“The pilot landed the airplane in the field because the runway was covered in ice.”

28 La planta suministra electricidad y contrata a muchos de los residents in the city.

“The plant supplies electricity and hires many of the residents in the city.”

29 La película era tan monótona que el público began to yawn.

“The movie was so monotonous that the crowd began to yawn.”

30 Los novios estaban agradecidos por los cubiertos hermosos that they received.

“The newlyweds were grateful for the beautiful silverware that they received.”

31 El chillido del águila sorprendió a los campistas mientras que intentaban a armar the tent.

“The shriek of the eagle startled the campers while they tried to assemble the tent.”

32 La carrera estaba competitiva hasta que un runner tripped and fell.

“The race was competitive until a runner tripped and fell.”

33 A causa del apagón el hielo melted in the freezer.

“Due to the blackout the ice melted in the freezer.”

34 Una avalancha en la montaña casi atrapa a los hikers in their shelter.

“An avalanche on the mountain almost traps the hikers in their shelter.”

35 La estudiante estaba angustiada cuando una sobrecarga eléctrica destroyed her computer.

“The student was anxious when an electrical surge destroyed her computer.”

36 La oruga creó un capullo y se convirtió into a beautiful butterfly.

“The caterpillar created a cacoon and changed into a beautiful butterfly.”

37 Los paleontólogos descubrieron una especie nueva de dinosauro during the excavation.

“The paleontologists discovered a new species of dinosaur during the excavation.”

38 La cafetería empezó a cocinar platos más saludables después de que los parents complained.

“The cafeteria began to cook more healthy dishes after the parents complained.”

39 Nevó tanto ayer que retrasaron todos los vuelos at least six hours.

“It snowed so much yesterday the flights were delayed at least six hours.”

40 Los ciervos se asustaron por la bocina fuerte y se escondieron in the woods.

“The deer were frightened by the loud honk and hid in the woods.”

41 Las botas de lluvia eran muy pequeñas y las tuve que cambiar for another pair.

“The rain boots were too small and I had to change them for another pair.”

42 En medio del concierto de rock el guitarrista rompió una cuerda and stopped playing.

“In the middle of the rock concert the guitarist broke a string and stopped playing.”

43 La construcción del puente se detuvo temporariamente porque el envío de cemento was delayed.

“The construction of the bridge was detained temporarily because the shipment of cement was delayed.”

44 Muchos pacientes recomiendan al dentista porque es meticuloso with his patients.

“Many patients recommend the dentist because he is meticulous with his patients.”

45 Los niños se rieron mientras corrían al playground during recess.

“The children were laughing as they ran to the playground during recess.”

(Appendices continue)

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

COMPREHENDING CODE-SWITCHES AND COGNITIVE CONTROL

Appendix B

Supplementary Data and Manipulation Checks for List and Dominance Effects

As can be seen in Table B1 for the self-paced reading trials,

mean reading time per word was not affected by sentence trial type

across lists with the exception of the English-dominant group

reading in the English lists. However, despite code-switched sen-

tences being uniquely signaled by the start of the sentence occur-

ring in Spanish, this group was slower when reading code-

switched sentences as compared to monolingual English sentences.

All other within-list differences are within 10 ms for a given

dominance group. Note, this descriptive table includes 46 partic-

ipants because 2 participants did not complete the proficiency

battery of tests in a separate session.

On Flanker trials to illustrate the lack of interaction with list, the

response times (RTs) are 604 ms (SE ⫽3.57) for lists where the

monolingual condition is English, and 610 ms (SE ⫽4.03) for lists

where the monolingual condition is Spanish. Clearly, there is a

very small 6-ms difference in overall Flanker performance across

lists. When we break lists down by Flanker congruency, the mean

Flanker RTs are as follows: English monolingual sentences, Con-

gruent Flankers: 560 ms (SE ⫽4.51); English monolingual sen-

tences, Incongruent Flankers: 651 ms (SE ⫽4.83); Spanish mono-

lingual sentences, Congruent Flankers: 563 ms (SE ⫽5.04);

Spanish monolingual sentences, Incongruent Flankers: 660 ms

(SE ⫽5.54). Notably, there is just a 3-ms difference for Congruent

Flanker trials across lists where the monolingual sentences are in

English vs. Spanish, and just a 9-ms difference for Incongruent

Flanker trials across the lists. This should provide convincing

evidence that Flanker performance does not differ depending on

the language of a list’s monolingual sentences, hence the lack of

interaction with list. For descriptive statistics split by list and

dominance, see Table B2.

As can be seen in Table B2, the Flanker effect (Incongruent

minus Congruent) is present no matter the list, and no matter the

participant’s dominance.

Moreover, regarding conflict adaptation in Table B3, the Con-

dition ⫽“II” (incongruent Flanker following “incongruent”

code-switched sentences) is always numerically faster than the

Condition ⫽“CI” (incongruent Flanker following “congruent”

monolingual sentences) for all groups regardless of list or

dominance, once again clearly explaining the lack of a Condi-

tion ⫻List interaction reported in the main text:

Thus, the monolingual sentences (by list) appear not to be

modulating the overall effects we observe.

(Appendices continue)

Table A1 (continued)

Item Sentence

46 El niño educado esperó hasta que todos en la mesa fueron servidos before eating.

“The well-educated boy waited until everyone at the table was served before eating.”

47 El día del eclipse solar el meteorólogo estaba muy ocupado and missed it.

“The day of the solar eclipse the meteorologist was very busy and missed it.”

48 Con la llegada de la primavera las flores están saliendo y las aves are returning.

“With the arrival of spring the flowers are emerging and the birds are returning.”

49 El agente inmobiliario se preocupó de que dejó documentos importantes in the building.

“The real estate agent was worried that he left important documents in the building.”

50 Organizar una buena fiesta de Navidad es un trabajo duro y caro por the decorations.

“To organize a good Christmas party is hard work and expensive because of the decorations.”

51 Al norte del pueblo hay un campo bello lleno de flowers every spring.

“To the north of the of the village is a beautiful field full of flowers every spring.”

52 En la fiesta de disfraces el disfraz más popular was a witch.

“At the costume party the most popular costume was a witch.”

Monolingual sentences are presented with their Spanish and English equivalent. Monolingual sentences were presented as

a between-subjects manipulation.

Code-switched stimuli used in the experiment. All participants read the code-switched

stimuli. A monolingual English gloss is presented below each sentence.

Table B1

Descriptive Statistics for the Self-Paced Reading Trials by List

(Monolingual Language), Trial Type (Monolingual Versus

Code-Switched) and Participants’ Language Dominance

Monolingual language

of “congruent”

sentences in list Number of

participants Participant

dominance Sentence

trial type Mean RT SD

EN 16 EN EN 338 103

EN 16 EN CS 404 128

EN 8 SP EN 429 173

EN 8 SP CS 418 108

SP 10 EN SP 518 147

SP 10 EN CS 515 134

SP 12 SP SP 471 231

SP 12 SP CS 475 303

Note.RT⫽reaction time; EN ⫽English; SP ⫽Spanish; CS ⫽code-

switching.

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

18 ADLER, VALDÉS KROFF, AND NOVICK

Received January 31, 2018

Revision received July 10, 2019

Accepted July 11, 2019 䡲

Table B2

Descriptive Statistics for Flanker Trials by List (Monolingual

Language) and Participants’ Language Dominance

Monolingual language

of “congruent”

sentences in list Participant

dominance Flanker

congruency Mean RT SE

EN EN Congruent 542 5.76

EN EN Incongruent 629 5.97

EN SP Congruent 592 7.22

EN SP Incongruent 686 8.13

SP EN Congruent 566 7.22

SP EN Incongruent 677 8.59

SP SP Congruent 561 7.41

SP SP Incongruent 653 7.48

Note.RT⫽reaction time; EN ⫽English; SP ⫽Spanish; CS ⫽code-

switching.

Table B3

Descriptive Statistics for Flanker Trials by List (Monolingual

Language), Participants’ Language Dominance, and

Experimental Condition

Monolingual language

of “congruent”

sentences in list Participant

dominance Condition Mean RT SE

EN EN CI 636 9.09

EN EN II 622 7.73

EN SP CI 695 11.4

EN SP II 676 11.5

SP EN CI 679 13.0

SP EN II 675 11.3

SP SP CI 662 10.2

SP SP II 645 10.9

Note.RT⫽reaction time; EN ⫽English; SP ⫽Spanish; CS ⫽code-

switching. For Condition, the first C/I refers to sentence type where C ⫽

monolingual, I ⫽code-switched, and the second C/I refers to Flanker trial

type where C ⫽congruent and I ⫽incongruent.

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

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