Bilingual speech production: evaluating linguistic similarity, language switching costs and attentional system

Abstract: This article presents a study which aimed at analyzing both linguistic similarity and switching cost effects on the attentional network task and picture-naming task, within the language-switching paradigm. Reaction time and accuracy of responses in these tasks were observed in bilingual Portuguese-English and Portuguese-Spanish participants’ performances. The results did not show any significant differences in the means between the groups. On the other hand, in the within-subjects comparison, statistically significant differences were observed when the participants switched from the L2 to the L1, evidencing an asymmetrical switching cost. Some correlations were also found between the two tasks in the Portuguese-Spanish bilingual group. These results are interpreted as indications of linguistic similarity effects in both naming and attention tasks.