Bilingual language production: The neurocognition of language representation and control

“Consequently, inhibitory control has also been implicated in L2 comprehension and production processes (e.g., Abutalebi & Green, 2007) independent of WM.”

“Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has been one of the major brain regions pertaining to language control in bilinguals (Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“Related to this, and pointed out by Abutalebi and Green (2007), is that when the system adapts toward strategies that are most appropriate to process the L2, the entire system changes.”

“While it is interesting that there is neurological evidence for differential recovery effects for treated and untreated languages (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green, 2005), therapy approaches are stimulating inhibition mechanisms of the recovering brain (rather than language processes per se) and…”

“The bilingual advantage was thus initially conceptualised as resulting from the enhancement of inhibitory mechanisms that are needed to resolve language interference in bilinguals (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Bialystok & Martin, 2004; Bialystok et al., 2004; Costa et al., 2008).”

“In the context of bilingualism, previous researches [Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Abutalebi et al., 2008] have also associated the functional contribution of this anatomical structure with inhibition mechanisms, because during speech production one language has to be inhibited in order to avoid interferences between the…”

“Presumably, however, as L2 proficiency increases, L2 production becomes relatively more routine and less effortful, while L1 production may become relatively less so (Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“…for selection, so they need to continuously monitor attentional resources to the target language (GOAL MAINTENANCE) and inhibit unwanted language to avoid confusion in language processing (CONFLICT RESOLUTION) (e.g., Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Bialystok, 2009; Costa, La Heij & Navarrete, 2006).”

“Abutalebi and Green’s (2007) model of language selection and control may account for what we have interpreted as an interference effect of cognates in the case of GLP’s pattern of compromised lexical selection. Recall that they proposed a network including left hemisphere regions in PFC, anterior cingulate, basal gang…”

“N IH -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript later in life) so long as they are proficient in both languages (e.g., for a review see Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“This has been predominantly demonstrated in research on lexical access (e.g. Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green, 1998; Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot & Schreuder, 1998; Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2007; Kroll, Bobb & Wodniecka, 2006; Kroll, Sumutka & Schwartz, 2005; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Spivey & Marian,…”

“…thus have to continuously monitor their two languages, to assure fluency in speech production in the relevant language while actively inhibiting the interfering and nonrelevant language (Paradis, 1984; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Bialystok, 2001; Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Martin-Rhee & Bialystok, 2008).”

“One prominent account proposes that for bilinguals to be able to successfully speak and control their languages, they engage a dynamic domain general neural network involving cortical and subcortical brain structures that allows them to resolve language competition to successfully select the intended language (Green,…”

“Bilinguals from birth who have to manage their language systems more extensively than L2 learners, as a consequence show more activity in language control regions such as the caudate nucleus (Hernandez et al. 2000; Lehtonen et al. 2005; Crinion et al. 2006; Abutalebi et al. 2008; Tan et al. 2011).”

“Bilinguals experience an increased inhibitory processing load because they manage the additional criterion of language membership (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green, 1986).”

“Hence, as proposed by Abutalebi and Green (2007), it is possible that these components exert a mutual influence, depending on the success of lexical retrieval.”

“In addition, there are circuits involved in language control outside the classical language areas (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Crinion, Turner, et al., 2006).”

“Cognitive control mechanisms are assumed to manage and resolve competition between distinct language networks (Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“This point brings us to the next section in which the power of computational modeling can be further attested and appreciated in the context in which not one, but two languages are acquired, either simultaneously or sequentially.”

“According to such a view, the L2 disadvantage is the www.frontiersin.org December 2011 | Volume 2 | Article 379 | 1 consequence of applying language control during speech production (e.g., Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Bialystok et al., 2008).”

“Exposure has a strong impact on language representation (Chee et al., 1999, 2001; Perani et al., 2003), and L1 dominance can even be attenuated if L2 exposure exceeds L1 (Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“…consider Sebastian et al., 2011) as well as the associated cognitive control mechanisms that are necessarily engaged for avoiding interferences between the different languages (RodriguezFornells et al., 2006; Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Bialystok and Poarch, 2014; Costa and Sebastián-Gallés, 2014).”

“Longitudinal studies of individuals learning to interpret offer a better method to explore the origin of the interpreter advantages (Abutalebi and Green 2007; Green et al. 2014; Macnamara 2012).”

“Functional neuroimaging studies also imply shared mechanisms (Abutalebi et al., 2012; Abutalebi & Green, 2007, 2008; Garbin et al., 2010; Ma et al., 2014); overlapping brain regions appear to support linguistic and nonlinguistic task switching, most commonly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and…”

“This control process is called bilingual language control (for reviews, see Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Declerck & Philipp, 2015a).”

“…be resolved by inhibiting an active, nontarget language (Abutalebi, 2008 ; Green, 1998 ) and is expected to rely on the anterior cingulate cortex, the caudate nucleus, the prefrontal cortex (such as BA 9 and BA 46), and the left inferior parietal lobe (Abutalebi, 2008 ; Abutalebi & Green, 2007 ).”

“Although in some of these studies, a cortical segregation between languages has been observed, as pointed out by Abutalebi and Green (2007) , these hemodynamic differences were mainly found in areas such as the anterior prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulated cortex.”

“Abutalebi and Green (2007) specify a model that integrates separable neural systems responsible for distinct aspects of cognitive control involved in bilingual speech production.”

“As a result of this effort, there is little doubt that our knowledge of the issues put forth above, has experienced major growth (for reviews, see: Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Bialystok, Craik, Green, & Gollan, 2010; Costa, Heij, & Navarrete, 2006; Costa & Santesteban, 2006; Hartsuiker, Costa, &…”

“…research on bilingualism, despite the variety of tasks, languages, and bilingual groups examined in these studies (Abutalebi, Cappa, & Perani, 2001; Abutalebi & Green, 2007; 1 It is also likely that researchers have a bias for reporting multilingual aphasic individuals who exhibit discrepancies—of…”

“However, as can be seen in Table 1, there are many studies with unbalanced bilinguals that report symmetric switch costs, inconsistent with relative language strength being the sole determining factor for a switch cost asymmetry.”

“(b)The neural circuitry involved in language control (adapted from [20]) with the four key areas is identified.”

“…control, being a key component of the prefrontal cortex (the center of cognitive control at the neural level), in addition to being a component of the parietal cortex, which is implicated in the selection of competing responses and in the context of task switching (Abutalebi & Green, 2007, p. 250).”

“…point in time) relies on a network comprising prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate gyrus and the basal ganglia (in particular the caudate nucleus) (Abutalebi & Green, 2007, 2008; Crinion, Turner, Grogan, Hanakawa, Noppeney, Devlin, Aso, Urayama, Fukuyama, Stockton, Usui, Green & Price, 2006).”

“The design in the Guo et al. 1For a thorough description of the model, and broader implications for language processing see Abutalebi and Green (2007).”

“…in the literature on multilingual aphasia is the extent to which selective difficulty in one language reflects the loss of abilities in that language or inefficient control mechanisms leading to insufficient activation and inhibition of the languages (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Paradis, 1998).”

“alternating languages across sentences) are associated with brain damage in a circuit involving the basal ganglia, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the prefrontal cortex (Abutalebi and Green, 2007). Furthermore, it has been shown that cognitive control operations involving LS are mainly elicited by activations…”

“As a result of this continuing inhibitory demand, bilingualism is thought to ‘train the brain’ and enhance executive function beyond the domain of language (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Hernandez, Bates, & Avila, 1996; Mechelli et al., 2004; Stocco, Yamasaki, Natalenko, & Prat, 2014).”

“…however, to the fact that providing the translation equivalent of the picture name will contribute to the recognition of the picture, and therefore facilitate picture naming, an advantage which might outweigh any possible competition at the lemma level (Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Hermans, 2004).”

“…consequences of the same mechanism that leads bilinguals to develop stronger executive control mechanism (i.e., interference between languages; Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Bialystok et al., 2009; Kroll et al., 2012), or a more emergent property of bilingual language use (which is that…”

“similar brain regions are employed during language and nonverbal control (Abutalebi et al., 2013; Abutalebi and Green, 2007; De Baene et al., 2015; Garbin et al., 2010; Kong et al., 2014; Luk et al., 2012).”

“The mechanisms that guarantee the success of communication are known as bilingual language control (LC) (Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“…switch mechanisms might depend on cortical and subcortical circuits: the left caudate nucleus (Crinion et al., 2006), prefrontal cortex (PFC; Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Chee, Soon, & Lee, 2003; Hernandez, Martinez, & Kohnert, 2000; Rodriguez-Fornells et al. 2005), left inferior frontal gyrus…”

“…lexicosemantic control at this level is exerted in a monotonic fashion through similar control mechanisms found to be involved in other cognitive domains (Casey et al., 2001) and entailed for bilingual language control as well (Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Abutalebi et al., 2013; Luk et al., 2012).”

“Li (2015) and Abutalebi and Green (2007) identify the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, basal ganglia and inferior parietal cortex as comprising a cognitive control network for bilingual language use.”

“The neurocognitive LANGUAGE CONTROL model (Abutalebi & Green, 2007, 2016; Green & Abutalebi, 2013) offers another perspective on the similarities and differences between L1 and L2 processing.”

“…languages in a grammatical processing task fits with a series of previous studies that have also shown similar patterns of activity across languages for early, highly proficient bilingual speakers (for comprehensive reviews, see Abutalebi et al., 2001; Indefrey, 2006; Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“The IPL has been associated to bilingual language control, including switching and inhibitory functions (Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“Moreover, bilingual language control (bLC) may not be a subsidiary to domain general cognitive control [16]; however, bLC may still show some overlap with domain general control mechanisms [2, 18].”

“This skill is acquired because bilinguals cannot “shut off” one language and function as monolinguals (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Kroll, Dussias, Bogulski, & Valdés Kroff, 2012).”

“Other studies have shown that similar brain regions might be involved in language control and inhibitory control (cf. Abutalebi & Green, 2007) or in language and task switching (De Baene et al., 2015), which has been taken to suggest a close relationship between language and executive control.”

“…more comprehensive information regarding lesion site in participants with aphasia would allow for the interpretation of behavioural experimental results within the context of neurocognitive models of bilingual language such as the cognitive control circuit proposed by Abutalebi and Green (2007).”

“The anterior cingulate has more typically been described as providing conflict monitoring for cognitive control (Shenhav, Straccia, Cohen, & Botvinick, 2014; Botvinick, Cohen, & Carter, 2004), including in the case language conflict in bilingualism (Green & Abutalebi, 2013; Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“…the cue process acts to filter out irrelevant information in the environment (interference suppression), and the stimulus process acts to inhibit inappropriate but prepotent response tendencies (response inhibition) (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Bunge, Dudukovic, Thomason, Vaidya, & Gabrieli, 2002).”

“…general cognitive control and lexical selection (Bokde, Tagamets, Friedman, & Horwitz, 2005; Braver, 2012; Kerns et al., 2004; Piai, Roelofs, Acheson, & Takashima, 2013; de Zubicaray, McMahon, Eastburn, & Pringle, 2006; ; evidence reviewed in Abutalebi & Green, 2007 and Green & Abutalabi, 2013).”

“Bilingual language processing is based on cognitive inhibition, conflict monitoring, and attention to prevent interference from the nontarget language, thus making bilinguals experts in cognitive control [Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Bialystok, 2015; Costa et al., 2009].”

“The result of any cross-language treatment effects in multilingual aphasia can be interpreted as supporting the convergence hypothesis (Abutalebi & Green, 2007), under the assumption that crosslanguage treatment effects would be expected only if the mechanisms that improve following treatment…”

“…although bilingual people process their two languages differently, they share a common representation and production neural network for their first and second languages, including prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, basal ganglia, and inferior parietal lobule (Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”