Inhibition of non-target languages in multilingual word production: Evidence from Uighur-Chinese-English trilinguals

The present study examined the hypothesis whether non-target languages are inhibited during multilingual language production by examining the n-2 language repetition cost. In two experiments, Uighur-Chinese-English trilinguals named Arabic digits in one of their three languages according to a visually presented cue. Significant n-2 repetition costs were obtained in both experiments, which indicate that inhibition exists during multilingual word production. In addition, in Experiment 1, it was also found that the n-2 repetition cost was reduced when cues were highly compatible with the task, which means non-target languages are less inhibited. In Experiment 2, the n-2 repetition cost was increased at a shorter CSI. Taken together, these results indicate that inhibition of non-target languages occurs during multilingual language production, and that efficiency of establishing the target language task schema has an effect on the inhibitory control process. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.