According to the bilingual literature, language selection is the principal challenge for the bilingual mind, as both languages are typically activated in parallel, and thus compete with one another. The process that alleviates this competition is called language control, and since the conception of this research field, it has been proposed that language control might be domain general and thus part of the more general cognitive control. Models of bilingual language processing have proposed the full range of possibilities regarding whether language control is domain general, ranging from models that posit that language control is entirely domain general, over to models that assume that language control is partly domain general and partly language-specific, and still other models that propose that language control is not domain general at all. The former models typically assume that domain-general control processes occur between task schemas, which are mental devices that are implemented to achieve task-specific goals (e.g. speaking a language or performing a task). Language-specific control processes, on the other hand, are assumed to occur between translation-equivalent word representations within the language system. Unfortunately, the confusing pattern of results across and within studies have not provided a straightforward indication of whether language control is domain general. In the current proposal, we suggested to examine the possibility of domain-general language control in a more nuanced manner. We focused on whether similar underlying mechanisms are implemented during control in different contexts and whether control processes are implemented at the same functional processing stages across different contexts.
This project is important on a societal level as it grants us insight into how more than half the world's population is able to process language, since more than half world’s population is proficient in two or more languages (Grosjean, 2010). Moreover, it also provides us insight into the mechanism of language control. In turn, this will provide us a better insight into bilingual aphasic patients, who have a deficit language control process.
