Bilingual language production: The neurocognition of language representation and control

“More recently, however, Abutalebi and Green (2007) revitalized this idea, describing a neural network for cognitive control and language control, which consists of the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the inferior parietal cortex, and the basal ganglia.”

“These brain areas are typical areas involved in language control [Abutalebi et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2007] and they also contribute to the general cognitive control network [Abutalebi and Green, 2007, 2008].”

“Functional imaging studies support this claim (see Perani and Abutalebi, 2005) with any initial divergence in patterns of activation reflecting problems associated with retrieving a less familiar language perhaps in the face of competition from the more proficient language (Abutalebi and Green, 2007). If a common subs…”

“…Marrelec, Pelegrini-Issac, Benali and Ansaldo (Ghazi Saidi et al., 2013) proposed a specific connectivity study to demonstrate the modulation of the connectivity between language network (defined by Price, 2010) and control network areas (chosen according to Abutalebi & Green, 2007b’s work).”

“Parallel system activation has been widely attested in experiments on bilingual lexical access (e.g., Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green, 1998; Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot & Schreuder, 1998; Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2007; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), but we advocate an important further suggestion that the…”

“…in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2015 | Volume 6 | Article 1179 observed in controlled, cued tasks that involved involuntary language switching, recent evidence from tasks that elicited voluntary language switching in a more natural scenario demonstrates that bilinguals might also…”

“The hypothesis that has been driving these studies is that the continuous need of controlling two languages, both while producing and comprehending speech, involves to some extent general-domain EC mechanisms (e.g., Rodriguez-Fornells et al., 2006; Abutalebi and Green, 2008).”

“This cost of a switch in the input has been theorised in terms of cognitive control and inhibition involving the executive system (Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“The ANOVA for participants’ reaction times found only a main effect of Language (Figure 1b), with both groups significantly slower in their L2 compared to their L1 (F(1,23)=44.”

“…dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), caudate nucleus, and bilateral supramarginal gyri (Abutalebi et al., 2008; Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Crinion et al., 2006), that is, in brain regions critically involved in domaingeneral executive function such as response…”

“These findings suggest that bilinguals with low L2 proficiency show reduced L2 lexical access which may be associated with lower degree of automaticity and higher reliance on cognitive control mechanisms relative to highly proficient bilinguals (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; van Hell & Tanner, 2012).”

“Controlling two or more languages, keeping them separated, and selecting the appropriate one for use in a given context is termed ‘bilingual language control’ (Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“The convergence hypothesis states that the two languages of a bilingual speaker share neural networks, and that the acquisition of an L2 involves the same neural regions as the L1 (Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“According to the Inhibitory Control Model [7] the amount of inhibition applied to resolve interference in language comprehension should be proportional to the level of activation of a given language [5, 7].”

“ROIs in the cognitive control network were selected with reference to Abutalebi and Green (2007, 2012, 2016).”

“…control simultaneous activation of their two languages suggest that bilinguals rely on both domain-general executive control processes (e.g., Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Kroll, et al., 2008) and language-specific control mechanisms (e.g., Gollan, et al., 2011; Prior & Gollan, 2013;…”

“Language switching relies on cognitive control mechanisms to coordinate the use of different languages ( Abutalebi & Green, 2007 ; Green, 1998 ; Price, Green, & von Studnitz, 1999 ).”

“For example, there is a rich and varied literature on language switching in bilinguals, asking whether switching or mixing costs can inform theories of lexical selection (e.g., Meuter and Allport, 1999; Costa and Santesteban, 2004; Costa et al., 2006; Finkbeiner et al., 2006b; Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Kroll et al.,…”

“…similar activation patterns in brain regions for general cognitive control (i.e., anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral middle frontal gyrus) (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Seo, Stocco, & Prat, 2018; Sierpowska et al., 2018) and for word reading (i.e., the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus,…”

“…confidence was significantly correlated with FS suggesting that increased L2 dominance would demonstrate a shift from highly controlled to more automatic and less effortful language processing (Abutalebi & Green, 2007), thereby, allowing for increased ability to switch between the two languages.”

“Much recent research suggests that the consequence of the parallel activation of both languages in bilinguals is that the non-target alternatives need to be suppressed (see e.g. Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green, 1998; Grosjean, 2001; Hermans et al., 1998; Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2007).”

“However, on closer inspection, the main neural differences are found outside the classical language areas, such as the more anterior parts of the left prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulated cortex, just to name a few (for review, see Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“…successfully use the target language, bilinguals need to adopt a language control mechanism to monitor and/or inhibit the non-target language (Green, 1998; Green and Abutalebi, 2013), which depends at least partly on cognitive control in general (non-linguistic) domain (Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“On a neural level, evidence from almost two dozens of neuroimaging studies shows that language control is achieved through a network tightly related to domain general executive control (for reviews Abutalebi & Green, 2007, 2016).”

“Arguably, this is because for bilinguals the act of learning and using a language is inherently a competitive process [61].”

“However, with age, L2 learning becomes increasingly difficult. possible, this comes at the cost of the engagement of more neural resources supporting L2 processing (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Wartenburger et al., 2003).”

“Our DCM results support a role for language-control interconnections in language recovery in bilingual aphasic patients [9, 10, 35] and are in line with the “dynamic view” of language production, which posits that patterns of language recovery are related to alterations in language control.”

“…the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive ability has focused on whether bilinguals possess superior non-linguistic cognitive control abilities compared to monolinguals (e.g., Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Bialystok, Craik, Klein & Viswanathan, 2004; Costa, Hernández & Sebastián-Gallés, 2008).”

“According to Abutalebi and Green (2007), cross-language competition is greater among less-proficient bilinguals compared to highly proficient bilinguals which explains why in a pure monolingual mode (Colomé and Miozzo, 2010), the non-target language is invariably activated.”

“These regions align ell with the network of brain areas involved in language control and ognitive control, as outlined by Abutalebi and Green (2007) , and later ncorporated into the Adaptive Control Hypothesis ( Green and Abualebi, 2013 ) – specifically the anterior cingulate cortex, inferior…”

“A second framework that carries implications for L2 AoA is the cognitive control model of Abutalebi, Green, and colleagues (Abutalebi, 2008, Abutalebi & Green, 2007; 2008).”

“Arabic was less frequently used in N.K.’s adult life, supporting views that allow for dynamic shaping of lexical representations based on language use rather than acquisition age (Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“…and language exposure, has been identified as one of the variables determining language representations in the bilingual brain (Vaid and Hall 1991, 2002; Abutalebi et al. 2001, 2005; Perani et al. 2003; Indefrey 2006; Perani and Abutalebi 2005; Stowe and Sabourn 2005; Abutalebi and Green 2007).”

“, 2007), such as bilingual language switching (Abutalebi and Green, 2007) and task-related motor control (Paus et al.”

“To accomplish such a task, bilinguals rely on a set of abilities referred to as LANGUAGE CONTROL (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green & Abutalebi, 2013).”

“However, these two networks are not separate; not only do they partially overlap anatomically [24], they also work in conjunction with each other when they are unimpaired by a lesion.”

“…populations with subcortical damage, it has been argued that the basal ganglia are involved in controlled aspects of bilingual language production in concert with the anterior cingulate, prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobule (e.g. Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Calabria et al., 2018).”

“Compared with Abutalebi and Green model [6], Luk et al. [10] identified no activation in the ACC and bilateral SMG, but identified additional clusters in the pre-SMA, left MTG and the right precentral gyrus.”

“…although several studies have pointed out to the possible involvement of the middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (see Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Hervais-Adelman, Moser-Mercer, & Golestani, 2011; Rodríguez- Fornells, de Diego Balaguer, & Münte, 2006; Luk, Green,…”

“Several models of bilingual language processing incorporate a conflict monitoring mechanism as part of the bilingual language control system (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green & Abutalebi, 2013).”

“In contemporary psychology, inhibition has been proposed as a compulsory (Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Kroll et al., 2008) or an optional mechanism (Verhoef et al., 2009) of attentional control in bilingual language performance, although others argue against the assumption of inhibition (Finkbeiner et al., 2006). The co…”

“…using orthogonal contrasts) analyses would demonstrate that as AoA increases, so does GM volume, thickness, and density, and that these changes would occur specifically in regions related to language processing (Price, 2010) and cognitive control (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green & Abutalebi, 2013).”

“…/ representations from both languages compete for selection, and that to resolve this competition, the non-target language is actively inhibited (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Costa, Colomé, Gómez, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2003; Green, 1998; Hermans et al., 1998; Jacobs, Fricke, & Kroll, 2016; Kroll,…”

“…and its neural basis has suggested that many of the differences that have been observed for performance in the L1 and L2 can be understood as differences in the demands to regulate accurate production in the two languages (e.g., Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green, 1998; Kroll & Gollan, in press).”

“On the basis of their extensive review of neuroimaging studies using fMRI or PET techniques, Abutalebi and Green (2008) argue that language switching engages brain areas involved in cognitive control.”

“An important topic in bilingual speech production is how bilinguals restrict their utterances to the desired language (i.e., language control; e.g., Green, 1998; Costa, 2005; Kroll et al., 2006; Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“Because studies like ours also show that bilingual language processing is influenced by the valence of words, this finding must be accounted for in models like BIA+ [52,53], Revised Hierarchical Model [54], or Inhibitory Control [55,56].”

“Based primarily on neuroimaging studies of language switching (largely without sentence context), Abutalebi and Green (2007), Abutalebi and Green (2008; Green & Abutalebi, 2013; see also Grundy, Anderson, & Bialystok, 2017; Luk, Green, Abutalebi, & Grady, 2012) proposed that inhibition is a…”

“Abutalebi and Green (2007) proposed a brain network for language control during bilingual speech production.”

“…area becomes specialized in a particular type of computation in L1 (such as left Broca's area and subcortical structures for syntactical processing), it will carry out the same type of computation if another language is added, even if that language is added later in life (Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“Given the importance of these regions in the network of language–cognitive control suggested by Abutalebi and Green (2007), the fact that she presented with damage to these regions means it is reasonable to attribute her difficulty inhibiting conflicting languages during treatment probes to damage…”

“This fits with the role of the ACC in conflict monitoring and error detection put forth by Abutalebi and Green (2007).”

“In bilinguals with aphasia (BWA) such as these who do not show pronounced pathological switching, language difficulties have been argued to stem from problems in controlling and managing the inhibition of their languages [34,35].”

“A possible network underlying language control was recently described by Abutalebi and Green (2007). The network consists of the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the inferior parietal cortex and the basal ganglia. Damage to these components might lead to the control deficits underlying bilingual aphas…”

“In a review of language switching studies, Abutalebi and Green (2007) proposed a brain network for bilingual language control.”

“This management depends, at least partly, on cognitive control in the general domain (Abutalebi & Green, 2007).”

“…in the bilateral IFG may either represent access to the phonological and semantic representations (Poldrack et al., 1999; Vigneau et al., 2006) or reflect the increased demand for cognitive control in the process of learning to read novel words (Abutalebi, 2008; Abutalebi and Green, 2007).”

“Differences in sociolinguistic variables such as patterns of language switching (Freedman et al., 2014) might have implications for cognitive functions and dementia (Abutalebi & Green, 2007; Green, 2011).”