Reactive Language Control: Unraveling Its Domain-General Impact in Executive Control Through the Monitoring Mechanism and Cross-Task Adaptation Evidence.

Abstract

Recently, some researchers propose to investigate the effect of proactive language control on executive control by examining the role language contexts might play. However, whether the reactive language control also drives the effect remains unclear. The present study adopts the cross-task adaptation design to compare the influence of language context and nonverbal context on executive control in the sample of unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals. We interleaved closely matched language switching tasks and nonverbal switching tasks with executive control tasks (Stroop task in Experiment 1 and Global-Local task in Experiment 2). Results showed the conflict adaptation effect of reactive cognitive control within the language context, but not within the nonverbal context. Moreover, this effect was observed under both congruent and incongruent executive control trials. Taken together, these results indicate the contribution of reactive language control to executive control, and the monitoring mechanism establishes a bridge connecting executive control and reactive language control during language production.