Open AccessPrefrontal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) has a domain-specific impact on bilingual language control.
Author(s) -
Kelly A. Vaughn,
Emily M Watlington,
Paulina Abrego,
Benjamin J. Tamber-Rosenau,
Arturo E. Hernández
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of experimental psychology. general
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.521
H-Index - 161
eISSN - 1939-2222
pISSN - 0096-3445
DOI - 10.1037/xge0000956
Subject(s) - transcranial direct current stimulation , dorsolateral prefrontal cortex , psychology , cognition , psycinfo , neuroscience of multilingualism , cognitive psychology , multilingualism , neuroscience , control (management) , prefrontal cortex , stimulation , computer science , medline , pedagogy , artificial intelligence , political science , law
Researchers debate whether domain-general cognitive control supports bilingual language control through brain regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a method to alter brain activity, which can lead to causal attribution of task performance to regional brain activity. The current study examined whether the DLPFC enables domain-general control for between-language switching and nonlinguistic switching and whether the control enabled by DLPFC differs between bilinguals and monolinguals. tDCS was applied to the DLPFC of bilingual and monolingual young adults before they performed linguistic and nonlinguistic switching measures. For bilinguals, left DLPFC stimulation selectively worsened nonlinguistic switching, but not within-language switching. Left DLPFC stimulation also resulted in higher overall accuracy on bilingual picture-naming. These findings suggest that language control and cognitive control are distinct processes in relation to the left DLPFC. The left DLPFC may aid bilingual language control, but stimulating it does not benefit nonlinguistic control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).