On the Connection Between Language Control and Executive Control-An ERP Study

Mathieu Declerck; Gabriela Meade; Katherine J Midgley; Phillip J Holcomb; Ardi Roelofs; Karen Emmorey

doi:10.1162/nol_a_00032

On the Connection Between Language Control and Executive Control-An ERP Study

Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2021 Dec 23;2(4):628-646. doi: 10.1162/nol_a_00032. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Mathieu Declerck^{1

2

3}, Gabriela Meade⁴, Katherine J Midgley⁵, Phillip J Holcomb⁵, Ardi Roelofs², Karen Emmorey¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, USA.
² Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands.
³ Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium.
⁴ Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders, San Diego State University & University of California, San Diego, USA.
⁵ Department of Psychology, San Diego State University, San Diego, USA.

Abstract

Models vary in the extent to which language control processes are domain general. Those that posit that language control is at least partially domain general insist on an overlap between language control and executive control at the goal level. To further probe whether or not language control is domain general, we conducted the first event-related potential (ERP) study that directly compares language-switch costs, as an index of language control, and task-switch costs, as an index of executive control. The language switching and task switching methodologies were identical, except that the former required switching between languages (English or Spanish) whereas the latter required switching between tasks (color naming or category naming). This design allowed us to directly compare control processes at the goal level (cue-locked ERPs) and at the task performance level (picture-locked ERPs). We found no significant differences in the switch-related cue-locked and picture-locked ERP patterns across the language and task switching paradigms. These results support models of domain-general language control.

Keywords: ERPs; executive control; language control; language switching; task switching.