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Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism: Online-First Articles

Language reconfiguration in bilinguals

A study with Huntington’s disease patients

| Center for Brain and Cognition, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain, Barcelona
| Movement Disorders Unit, Neurology Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain | Biomedical Research Institute (IIB-Sant Pau), Barcelona, Spain | Centro de Investigación en Red-Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Madrid, Spain | Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain | Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| Movement Disorders Unit, Neurology Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain | Biomedical Research Institute (IIB-Sant Pau), Barcelona, Spain | Centro de Investigación en Red-Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Madrid, Spain
| Movement Disorders Unit, Neurology Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain | Biomedical Research Institute (IIB-Sant Pau), Barcelona, Spain | Centro de Investigación en Red-Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Madrid, Spain
| Psychiatry Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain | Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| Movement Disorders Unit, Neurology Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain | Biomedical Research Institute (IIB-Sant Pau), Barcelona, Spain | Centro de Investigación en Red-Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Madrid, Spain | Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain | Psychiatry Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain
| Center for Brain and Cognition, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain, Barcelona | Biomedical Research Institute (IIB-Sant Pau), Barcelona, Spain
The present study investigated language inhibition and cross-language interference as two possible mechanisms of bilingual language control (BLC) that can be affected by Huntington’s disease (HD), a neurodegenerative disease (ND) affecting the striatum. To this aim, the study explored the performance of pre-symptomatic and early-stage HD patients in two experimental tasks meant to elicit cross-language interference and language inhibition, including a Stroop task and a language switching task. The results revealed dissociations between these two mechanisms, indicating that language activation or inhibition is related to HD pathology while cross-language interference is not. Switch costs in HD patients were greater than controls in low-demand control conditions of language switching (longer preparation time), while Stroop effects were similar between the two groups of participants. This result was interpreted as a difficulty in overcoming the excessive inhibition applied to non-target language. The BLC processes related to the striatum and subcortical structures are discussed.
Keywords: bilingualism, movement disorders, language control, inhibition, cross-language interference
Published online: 10 September 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.18022.cal
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