Contributions of nonlinguistic task-shifting to language control in bilingual children.

Language control, bilinguals' ability to regulate which language is used, has been posited to recruit domain-general cognitive control. However, studies relating language control and cognitive control have yielded mixed results in adults and have not been undertaken in children. The current study examined the contributions of nonlinguistic task-shifting to language control in Spanish-English bilingual children (ages 5-7) during a cued-switch picture-naming task. Language control was assessed at two levels: (1) cross-language errors, which indexed the success of language selection, and (2) naming speed, which indexed the efficiency of lexical selection. Nonlinguistic task-shifting was a robust predictor of children's cross-language errors, reflecting a role for domain-general cognitive control during language selection. However, task-shifting predicted naming speed only in children's non-dominant language, suggesting a more nuanced role for cognitive control in the efficiency of selecting a particular lexical target.