Abstract
Neuroimaging studies have reported overlapping neural circuits
for cognitive control when engaging in tasks that involve verbal
and nonverbal stimuli in young adult bilinguals. However, no
study to date has examined the neural basis of verbal and
nonverbal task switching in both monolinguals and bilinguals due
to the inherent challenge of testing verbal task switching with
monolinguals. Therefore, it is not clear whether the finding for
overlapping networks is unique to bilingualism or indicative of
general cognitive control. To address this question, the current
study compared functional neural activation for young adults who
were bilingual speakers of English and French or monolingual
English speakers who had limited French learning experience
(``functional monolinguals'') on verbal and nonverbal task
switching. Analyses showed common variance explaining general
cognitive control in task switching across verbal and nonverbal
domains for both groups, in line with the explanation that task
switching involves general cognitive control, as well as unique
brain regions recruited by monolinguals and bilinguals.
Specifically, beyond the processing common to the tasks,
monolinguals also recruited distinct networks for each of verbal
and nonverbal switching but bilinguals used a common shared
network. Thus, the domain-general aspect of switching is
different for monolinguals and bilinguals.
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