ERIC Number: EJ980481
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Oct
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1366-7289
EISSN: N/A
Degree of Conversational Code-Switching Enhances Verbal Task Switching in Cantonese-English Bilinguals
Yim, Odilia; Bialystok, Ellen
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, v15 n4 p873-883 Oct 2012
The study examined individual differences in code-switching to determine the relationship between code-switching frequency and performance in verbal and non-verbal task switching. Seventy-eight Cantonese-English bilinguals completed a semi-structured conversation to quantify natural code-switching, a verbal fluency task requiring language switching, and two non-verbal switching tasks. Participants who engaged in more conversational code-switching showed smaller costs in verbal task switching than those who switched languages less frequently. Participants performed similarly to bilinguals in previous studies on non-verbal switching tasks, but in this case performance was not linked to the degree of conversational code switching. The difference in the influence of code-switching for verbal and non-verbal executive control tasks indicates a dissociation between domains for the mechanism of task switching.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Code Switching (Language), Sino Tibetan Languages, English (Second Language), Second Language Learning, Task Analysis, Verbal Communication, Individual Differences, Correlation, Language Fluency, Nonverbal Communication, Executive Function
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A