Item- and language-specific situational language balance
Bilingual flexibility allows bilingual individuals to choose words in one language or the other depending on the situation – for example, English when speaking with an international colleague and German when speaking with a family member. In order to select one of two languages for word production, the situational language balance (i.e., the current level of activation of both languages) must shift in favor of the desired language. Situational language balance is therefore a temporary state influenced by dispositional (i.e., long-term) language balance and short-term control mechanisms that regulate situational language balance. This project distinguishes between item-specific and language-specific balance and investigates how situational language balance shifts in response to environmental stimuli. In particular, we investigate whether these shifts occur at the level of individual words (item-specific) or at the level of the entire language (language-specific). To this end, situational language balance is manipulated in languageswitching experiments with cue stimuli, in which a cue indicates in which language the name of a depicted object must be typed. At the level of specific items, participants will, for example, name objects that are more frequently associated with one language than the other in everyday life. At the level of the language as a whole, sociocultural stimuli such as famous buildings are used to influence the situational language balance. It is expected that the resulting activation (or shift in activation) for individual items or the entire language will influence interference between the languages and its resolution through shortterm control mechanisms. The effect of these item- and languagespecific influences on short-term language control is measured using language-switching costs. Language-switching costs are calculated as the performance difference between language-switching trials (in which the language is switched from the previous trial) and languagerepetition trials (in which the language remains the same as in the previous trial). Overall, this project will improve our understanding of how situational language balance at different levels (item vs. language) influences interference between languages and how it interacts with short-term language control.