Congratulations to PhD alumnus Aleksandra Tomić and Professor Edith Kaan, whose paper entitled “Oscillatory brain responses to processing code-switches in the presence of others” was recently published in the latest issue of Brain and Language. Read the abstract below and find the article here. Way to go you two!
Code-switching, i.e. the alternation between languages in a conversation, is a typical, yet socially-constrained practice in bilingual communities. For instance, code-switching is permissible only when other conversation partners are fluent in both languages. Studying code-switching provides insight in the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying language control, and their modulation by linguistic and non-linguistic factors. Using time–frequency representations, we analyzed brain oscillation changes in EEG data recorded in a prior study (Kaan et al., 2020). In this study, Spanish-English bilinguals read sentences with and without switches in the presence of a bilingual or monolingual partner. Consistent with prior studies, code-switches were associated with a power decrease in the lower beta band (15–18 Hz). In addition, code-switches were associated with a power decrease in the upper gamma band (40–50 Hz), but only when a bilingual partner was present, suggesting the semantic/pragmatic processing of code-switches differs depending on who is present.