Find in Library

This study asks whether early bilingual speakers who have already developed a language control mechanism to handle two languages control a dominant and a lately learnt language in the same way as late bilingual speakers. We therefore compared event-related potentials in a language switching task in two groups of participants switching between a dominant (L1) and a weak lately learnt language (L3). Early bilingual late learners of an L3 showed a different ERP pattern (larger N2 mean amplitude) as late bilingual late learners of an L3. Even though the relative strength of languages was similar in both groups (a dominant and a weak lately learnt language), they controlled their language output in a different manner. Moreover, the N2 was similar in two groups of early bilinguals tested in languages of different strength. We conclude that early and late bilinguals differ in language control. This difference might explain some of the advantages early bilinguals have when learning new languages.