High proficient bilinguals bring in higher executive control when encountering diverse interlocutors

Abstract

We examined if bilinguals are sensitive to contextual factors with regard to the presence of interlocutors and if this reflects in how they modulate their executive control. First, we introduced Telugu–English bilinguals to monolingual, bilingual and neutral interlocutors in the form of cartoon characters through an interactive session. Following this, they performed the attention network task (ANT) with the image of interlocutors appearing on every trial before the flankers. High proficient bilinguals (in L2) were overall faster on the ANT (indicating higher executive control) when different interlocutors appeared randomly in a mixed block compared to the low proficient bilinguals. However, this effect was not found when the appearance of the interlocutors along-side the ANT task was blocked. These data demonstrate that high proficient bilinguals brought in higher executive control when the context required higher monitoring (different interlocutors appearing randomly) compared to the low proficient bilinguals. We interpret the findings with regard to the adaptive control hypothesis.