Please join us for the following talk in room G26, 7 George Square. The link to the online Teams meeting will be sent to the mailing list closer to the time for those who cannot join us in Edinburgh.

Speaker

Time and date

Tuesday 2nd June, 2 PM.

Title and abstract

Code-switching,  cognitive control, and other downstream effects

Code-switching, that is, the alternation between different languages in a single conversation or utterance, provides a unique window into how the mind controls two or more languages. Prior psycholinguistic research has mainly focused on the “costs” associated with processing a code-switch. In this talk we instead look at the downstream effects of code-switching. We will first discuss some hypothesized connections between code-switching and domain-general cognitive control. This connection has been investigated through conflict adaptation paradigms, in which sentences are mixed with non-linguistic cognitive control trials (Flanker trials). The assumption is that processing a code-switch intensifies cognitive control, which has downstream consequences in that it may impact the processing of a following non-linguistic trial. We will present data from behavioral and EEG studies on code-switching and conflict adaptation. Second, we will discuss the effects of code-switching on the processing of information downstream of code-switching. Taken together, these two lines of research suggest that code-switching enhances attention to the subsequent content. Code-switching may be costly, but can facilitate communication.

The meeting link is distributed on our mailing list. If you’re not subscribed to this list, please email us at ppls.psycholingcoffee@ed.ac.uk