Processing noncanonical word orders in monolingual and bilingual learners: exploring linguistic and cognitive conflict resolution

Abstract Based on previous work reporting differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in cognitive and linguistic processing, this study investigates relations between cognitive and linguistic conflict resolution in L1 German adolescents by exploring participants’ cognitive control ability and the revision of grammatical analysis of (object-initial) wh-questions and relative clauses in German and English. Sixty-eight 12- to 14-year-old learners of English (monolinguals or heritage language bilinguals from birth) were matched on German and English proficiency and socio-economic status. Participants performed a Flanker task measuring non-linguistic conflict resolution and cognitive control as well as two sentence-picture matching experiments measuring linguistic conflict resolution: one in L1 German and one in L2/L3 English. In corroboration with previous work, the Flanker task results yielded a significantly smaller Flanker effect magnitude for bilinguals than monolinguals, which constitutes evidence of enhanced non-linguistic conflict resolution for bilinguals. As for linguistic conflicts, in the German experiment, bilinguals exhibited smaller differences between subject and object word orders than monolinguals, with only monolinguals showing a subject over object processing advantage. In contrast, in the English experiment, the groups performed similarly, and both displayed the subject over object processing advantage. We interpret these findings to indicate that differences in non-linguistic conflict resolution were only mirrored in resolving linguistic conflict in the more proficient and dominant language.