Bilingual language control during sentence vs. single word production – A Registered Report

Whenever bilinguals produce language, both languages are activated and compete to some degree. Language control is the process used to minimize this cross-language interference and facilitate the selection of words in the appropriate language. While ample research has investigated language control, the overwhelming majority of studies focus on single word production with little attention to language control during sentence production. The distinction between single word and sentence production is an important one, as the few studies that compared these two conditions have observed language control differences. With this study, we investigated this issue by relying on an index of language control that has not been used to investigate differences/similarities in language control during single word and sentence production, namely the blocked language order effect. The results revealed a robust blocked language order effect reflecting sustained language control following second language use. Importantly, the effect did not differ as a function of the linguistic content of second language use (i.e., single word vs sentence production), suggesting mainly similarities in proactive language control processes across levels of linguistic complexity.