Language switch costs in sentence comprehension between Chinese and English: Evidence from self-paced reading
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Effects of language switching in bilinguals have been extensively investigated, but the majority of studies have focused on switching in language production. Here we explored intrasentential switching between Chinese and English, employing a self-paced reading paradigm, with Chinese/English using radically different orthographic systems. In addition, we investigated whether L2 (English) proficiency influences switch costs. Results revealed that switch costs emerged only when switching into L1 (Chinese); by contrast, when switching into L2, a less reliable facilitatory effect was observed. L2 proficiency affected reading speed for English stimuli, but it did not directly modulate switch costs. Moreover, we have integrated various findings from previous research and identified that the use of different comparison patterns is a major contributing factor to the inconsistency in results among prior studies. We suggest that in cross-script language switching, switch costs stem from a general cognitive control mechanism rather than from activation within the bilingual mental lexicon.
Authors: Mengyan Zhu, Patrick Sturt, Markus Damian
Institutions: University of Bristol, University of Edinburgh
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W4407674140