The impact of background language on verbal performances and situational language balance
In an increasingly multilingual world, bilingual flexibility (the ability to adapt language use to the situational context) is of great importance. Bilinguals often find themselves in environments where multiple languages they understand coexist, such as in the workplace or in social situations. In such contexts, it may be necessary to perform tasks in one language while hearing background speech in another familiar language. This research project investigates how background
speech in the first language (L1) or second language (L2) influences the cognitive performance of bilinguals on tasks that must be performed in L1 or L2. It provides insights into situational adjustments of language balance and the role of bilingual language control in this process. The project integrates the two research fields of bilingual language control and the irrelevant speech effect, and investigates how background speech leads to interference and which control mechanisms occur during task performance. Using established experimental paradigms for measuring cognitive performance (e.g., serial recall, picture naming) and electrophysiological methods (EEG), the project investigates the behavioral effects of background speech on verbal tasks and identifies neural markers for auditory distraction and interference mechanisms. The project is divided into two complementary research lines: Line A investigates how background speech (L1 vs. L2), in combination with the demands and language of the task at hand, affects verbal short-term memory. Line B analyzes how lexical selection processes and their neural correlates are influenced during speech production under various combinations of background and task language (L1 vs. L2). A final work package consolidates the results through mega-analytic data integration to uncover overarching patterns of bilingual language regulation in multilingual contexts. This project makes an important contribution to the understanding of bilingual flexibility by demonstrating how bilinguals adapt their cognitive and linguistic processing to successfully navigate the challenges of dynamic multilingual environments.