Capturing multiple interaction effects in L1 and L2 object-naming reaction times in healthy bilinguals: a mixed-effects multiple regression analysis

BACKGROUND: It is difficult to set up a balanced higher-order full-factorial experiment that can capture multiple intricate interactions between cognitive and psycholinguistic factors underlying bilingual speech production. To capture interactions more fully in one study, we analyzed object-naming reaction times (RTs) by using mixed-effects multiple regression. METHODS: Ten healthy bilinguals (median age: 23 years, seven females) were asked to name 131 colored pictures of common objects in each of their languages. RTs were analyzed based on language status, proficiency, word choice, word frequency, word duration, initial phoneme, time series, and participant’s gender. RESULTS: Among five significant interactions, new findings include a facilitating effect of a cross-language shared initial phoneme (mean RT for shared phoneme: 974 ms vs. mean RT for different phoneme: 1020 ms), which profited males less (mean profit: 10 ms) than females (mean profit: 47 ms). CONCLUSIONS: Our data support language-independent phonological activation and a gender difference in inhibitory cognitive language control. Single word production process in healthy adult bilinguals is affected by interactions among cognitive, phonological, and semantic factors.