A brief training session in language switching offers immediate benefits for inhibitory control among English-dominant bilinguals

Abstract

This study investigated whether a short-term training session in language switching enhances inhibitory control in English-dominant bilinguals ( N  = 55) whose second language backgrounds included 17 various languages. The participants completed a pre-training flanker task, a 50-minute numeral-based language-switching task and a post-training flanker task. Results showed significantly reduced flanker effect following the language-switching task. In the switching task, participants exhibited typical switch cost patterns, with slower and less accurate responses on switch trials compared to nonswitch trials. Additionally, switch costs were asymmetrical, with greater costs observed into their first versus second language, consistent with inhibitory control accounts of bilingual language use. Overall, these findings suggest that language switching engages control processes that can have immediate, positive effects on inhibitory control outside the language domain. These results support partial overlap between bilingual language control and domain-general executive processes, highlighting the context-dependent nature of cognitive transfer effects.