Individual differences in inhibitory control relate to bilingual spoken word processing*

We investigated whether individual differences in inhibitory control relate to bilingual spoken word recognition. While their eye movements were monitored, native English and native French English-French bilinguals listened to English words (e.g., field) and looked at pictures corresponding to the target, a within-language competitor (feet), a French cross-language competitor (fille "girl"), or both, and unrelated filler pictures. We derived cognitive and oculomotor inhibitory control measures from a battery of inhibitory control tasks. Increased cognitive inhibitory control was linked to less within-language competition for all bilinguals, and less cross-language competition for native French low-English-exposure bilinguals. Increased oculomotor inhibitory control was linked to less within-language competition for all native French bilinguals, and less cross-language competition for native French low-English-exposure bilinguals. The results extend previous findings (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2011), and suggest that individual differences in inhibitory control relate to bilingual spoken word processing.