Is it easier to use one language variety at a time, or mix them? An investigation of voluntary language switching with bidialectals

Mathieu Declerck; Neil W Kirk

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0256554

. 2021 Sep 8;16(9):e0256554. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256554

Is it easier to use one language variety at a time, or mix them? An investigation of voluntary language switching with bidialectals

Mathieu Declerck ¹, Neil W Kirk ^2,^*

Editor: Veronica Whitford³

PMCID: PMC8425545 PMID: 34495987

Abstract

Previous language production research with bidialectals has provided evidence for similar language control processes as during bilingual language production. In the current study, we aim to further investigate this claim by examining bidialectals with a voluntary language switching paradigm. Research with bilinguals performing the voluntary language switching paradigm has consistently shown two effects. First, the cost of switching languages, relative to staying in the same language, is similar across the two languages. The second effect is more uniquely connected to voluntary language switching, namely a benefit when performing in mixed language blocks relative to single language blocks, which has been connected to proactive language control. If a similar pattern could be observed with bidialectals in a voluntary language switching paradigm, then this would provide additional evidence in favor of similar control processes underlying bidialectal and bilingual language production.

Introduction

Previous research has indicated that when bidialectals (i.e., speakers of a regional dialect that are also fluent in a standard language variety) produce language, both the standard language and dialect are activated (e.g., [1, 2]), which is assumed to lead to competition among both language varieties. Similar to bilinguals (for reviews, see [3, 4]), a language control process is assumed to be implemented to deal with the competition between language varieties in bidialectals [1, 2, 5, 6]. Some studies have suggested that the language control process implemented by bidialectal speakers of closely related language varieties is similar to the bilingual language control process [1, 2, 5]. In the current study, we set out to further investigate the language control process implemented by bidialectals and its relation to the bilingual language control process by letting bidialectals perform in a voluntary language switching paradigm.

Voluntary language switching [7–16]usually requires participants to name pictures in one of two languages. Unlike other variants of the language switching paradigm (for a review, see [4]), which indicate the language that should be used for each stimulus through cues (e.g., differently colored frames around the stimuli [17]), alternating languages (e.g., AABBAABB, with A and B referring to trials in different languages [18]), or written words (e.g [19]), voluntary language switching allows the participants to choose the language on each trial.

Similar to other variants of language switching (e.g., [17, 20–23]), voluntary language switching with bilinguals generally results in a cost when switching languages, relative to staying in the same language across trials [8–16] however, see [7]. Indicative of the voluntary language switching paradigm with bilinguals is that these switch costs are similar across languages (i.e., symmetrical switch costs [8–14]). This is in contrast with other variants of the language switching paradigm, where asymmetrical switch costs, which entails larger switch costs in the first language (L1) than in the second language (L2) and is typically used as a measure of inhibitory control (e.g., [17, 24–26]for a review, see [27]), are relatively often found. According to Gollan and Ferreira [11], the absence of asymmetrical switch costs with the voluntary language switching paradigm is because this paradigm allows bilinguals to name “easier” words in their L2. This should result in a more similar L1 and L2 activation level for the produced words regardless of language proficiency, and thus might lead to symmetrical switch costs.

Another measure of language control are mixing costs (for a review, see [28]). Mixing costs entail worse performance in repetition trials in mixed language blocks relative to performance in single language blocks. This measure has been explained with control processes that are implemented in anticipation of any upcoming cross-language competition (i.e., proactive language control; e.g., [26]) and the mental cost to maintain and monitor two languages (e.g., [8]). Mixing costs are a highly stable effect in all variants of language switching (e.g., [20, 25, 26, 29–31]), with the exception of voluntary language switching. Voluntary language switching studies actually tend to show a mixing benefit (i.e., worse performance in single language blocks relative to performance in repetition trials in mixed language blocks) in one [11, 12] or both languages [8, 9, 13, 14]. The mixing benefit in L2 observed by Gollan and Ferreira [11]was explained by assuming that only “easier” words are produced in L2 in the voluntary language switching paradigm. Based on this explanation, one would expect that the mixing benefit was only observed for words that were consistently named in L2, but that was not the case [11]. An alternative explanation that can account for a mixing benefit across both languages comes from de Bruin et al. [8]: Production in a single language block requires substantial proactive inhibition of the non-target language [32, 33]. When producing in a mixed language block with voluntary language switching, bilinguals do not require substantial proactive control processes to guide language production, since participants can choose which language to use on any given trial. So, because the implementation of more proactive control processes during single than mixed language blocks is more taxing, better performance is expected in the latter block type when using a voluntary language switching paradigm. From this overview, it appears that voluntary vs. involuntary language switching has a large impact on measures of the bilingual language control process.

In the current study, we set out to investigate if this is also the case for bidialectals by letting bidialectals perform in a voluntary language switching paradigm. The few studies that investigated control processes with bidialectals and bilinguals provide evidence for a shared language control process. Similar to bilinguals, bidialectals show a cost to switching between language varieties, relative to staying in the same language variety across languages [1, 2, 5, 6] Kirk and colleagues [5], for instance, let bidialectals (English-Orcadian) name pictures during a language switching task, where the language variety on each trail was indicated by differently colored frames corresponding to each language variety (cf. involuntary language switching). The results showed that switching between language varieties results in worse performance than staying in the same language variety across trials. Similar to bilinguals (e.g., [17]), these bidialectals showed asymmetrical switch costs, with larger switch costs in their more dominant language variety (dialect) than in their less dominant language variety (standard language; see also [2]). Asymmetrical switch costs were even found with new bidialectals (English-Dundonian), whereas more fluent bidialectals showed symmetrical switch costs [1]. The latter pattern is similar to that observed with second language learners and highly proficient bilinguals, respectively ([21, 34]). Finally, Kirk and colleagues also showed worse performance in repetition trials in mixed language blocks than in single language blocks [5]. So, along the lines of prior bilingual studies (e.g., [26, 29–31]), mixing costs can be observed with bidialectals during involuntary language switching.

The similarities of bidialectals and bilinguals in previous studies that relied on involuntary language switching seem to indicate that similar language control processes are implemented by these two groups during language production. While it might seem obvious that bilinguals and bidialectals rely on the same language control processes, previous related research indicates that is not necessarily the case. For instance, control processes used within the same language has shown to be different to control used between languages [35]. Even more damning for the assumption that similar control processes are used throughout language processing is that some studies found evidence that different language pairs do not necessarily converge when it comes to language control [36]. A similar discrepancy in language control has been observed across modalities within the same bilinguals (e.g., [37]). These studies provide evidence against the claim that language control is domain general [17, 24], as the control processes within a domain (i.e., language processing) are sometimes even different.

There have also been attempts to objectively distinguish languages from dialects (and thus bilinguals from bidialectals) on a cognitive level using the picture word interference paradigm, which initially suggested dialect items were processed as within-language competitors, akin to synonyms [38]. However, more recent evidence has challenged some of these findings [39, 40]. Thus, the extent to which bidialectals are similar to bilinguals is still unclear and can have theoretical and methodological implications for research comparing bilinguals and monolinguals. For example, research suggesting that there is a general executive control advantage for bilinguals over monolinguals as a result of the regular engagement of language control mechanisms [41], could be invalidated by the presence of bidialectal speakers who also use these mechanisms, but who are erroneously categorized as monolingual [42].

To further investigate the issue of whether there are similar language control processes used in bilingual and bidialectal language production, we set out to examine whether a similar pattern can be observed with bidialectals as with bilinguals in a voluntary language switching paradigm. In the current study, we rely on Scottish speakers of a specific type of Scots as the dialect of interest. Although Scots is recognized by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages as a separate minority language (from English), it is generally not given this status, with many facing ridicule for suggesting that Scots and English are separate languages [43]. Even a majority of speakers themselves do not hold this view, with one Scottish Government [44] report demonstrating that 65% of respondents consider their use of Scots as “just a way of speaking”. Consequently, these speakers are likely to identify as monolingual rather than bilingual—or even bidialectal—especially if language background measures are not sensitive to the existence of non-standard varieties (see, [1, 5]).

More specifically, we will test speakers of Dundonian Scots and (Scottish) Standard English. Dundonian is an urban dialect used in and around the Scottish city of Dundee. Like other urban Scots dialects, it exists as a lower status variety in a diglossic situation with (Scottish) Standard English as the prestige variety [45]. Whereas Dundonian Scots overlaps substantially with its corresponding standard language, there are several notable differences. First, it is characterized by phonetic differences relative to the standard language, such as vowel differences (e.g. Standard English ‘pie’ / paɪ / vs. Dundonian ‘peh’ /pε/) and monophthongisation (e.g. Standard English ‘mouse’ /maʊs/ vs. Dundonian ‘moose’ /mu:s/). Second, and most important for the current study, there are also words entirely different in Dundonian than its corresponding translation equivalent in Standard English (e.g., “crying” in Standard English would be “greetin” in Dundonian).

If bidialectals and bilinguals rely on similar language control processes, we expect to observe symmetrical switch costs in the voluntary language switching paradigm with the English-Dundonian bidialectals, similar to the pattern observed with bilinguals. This finding might simply indicate that bidialectals tend to produce “easier” words in the less proficient language [11]. Observing a mixing benefit with English-Dundonian bidialectals in a voluntary language switching paradigm would be a more unique finding, as this effect has only reliably been observed with bilinguals in a voluntary language switching paradigm. A mixing benefit would indicate that bidialectals implement proactive language control in single language blocks, whereas this is less the case in mixed language blocks [8].

Method

Participants

A power analysis on the mixing benefit was run to determine the required number of participants and trials. We chose the mixing benefit, since this effect seems more uniquely connected to voluntary language switching. Along the approach suggested by Brysbaert and Stevens [46], we ran 200 (Monte Carlo) simulations with the simr package [47] on the voluntary language switching data of Jevtović et al. [14], who tested 40 bilinguals with 20 distinct stimuli in 80 trials in single language blocks and 180 trials in voluntary language switching blocks for each participant. The results showed that the setup of Jevtović et al. [14] had a 99.5% chance of showing a mixing benefit. In the current study, we will rely on the same number of stimuli as Jevtović and colleagues. Furthermore, we will rely on a similar number of participants and trials. The number of voluntary language switching trials per participant will be slightly decreased relative to Jevtović et al. (from 180 to 160 trials per participant). That way, we will have a similar number of trials in the voluntary language switching blocks and the single language blocks. To make sure that we have at least the same number of voluntary language switching block trials across participants as Jevtović and colleagues, we increased the number of participants from 40 to 46.

So, 46 active bidialectal speakers of (Scottish) Standard English and Dundonian Scots will be recruited, all between 18 and 60 years old. These bidialectals will receive the same questionnaire as the bidialectals in Kirk et al. [1], which will provide us with a subjective measure of the participant’s language proficiency through self-reported proficiency scores, as well as information regarding the interactional context in which each language is used.

The proposed study has received approval from Abertay University’s research ethics committee (EMS4259).

Materials and task

Along the lines of Jevtović et al. [14], 20 pictures will be presented to the bidialectal participants. These pictures correspond to non-cognate names between Standard English (average number of syllables across the English names: 1.55; average Zipf frequency of the English names: 4.24; [48]) and Dundonian (average number of syllables across the Dundonian names: 1.60; Zipf frequency was not calculated for Dundonian names as no database with word frequency exists for the Dundonian dialect. See S1 Appendix for the stimulus list). Each picture will be presented twice, in non-consecutive trials, throughout each block.

Procedure

The experimental task will be made publicly available as “Open Materials” on the Gorilla platform (http://gorilla.sc).

The picture naming study will be presented online on the Gorilla platform [49]. After providing informed consent, participants will perform a microphone check, in which they name a sentence and then listen to their own recording. A familiarization block will follow the microphone check, in which all 20 pictures will be presented together with the corresponding names in Standard English and Dundonian. Because there is no standardized written form of the Dundonian dialect, participants will have the option to listen to a recording of the Dundonian word spoken by a local speaker. The familiarization phase will be followed by the actual experiment, which will consist of two single language blocks of 40 trials each and four voluntary language switching block of 40 trials each. There are several ways to present the order of single language blocks and mixed language blocks to obtain mixing costs or a mixing benefit [28]. We opt for the setup used in the bilingual voluntary language switching studies of de Bruin et al. [8, 9] and Jevtović et al. [14]: Participants will first see one single language block, followed by the four voluntary language switching blocks, and then again one single language block in the other language variety than the first single language block. The language variety of the single language blocks will be counterbalanced across participants.

Prior to each of the three block types (i.e., English language block, Dundonian language block, and the voluntary language switching blocks), instructions will be displayed pertinent for that block type, emphasizing speed and accuracy to name each picture. Moreover, in the single language blocks, the bidialectals will be instructed to name each picture in the corresponding language throughout the block. Prior to the voluntary language switching blocks the following sentences will be presented (for similar instructions, see [8, 14]): “In the following section, you can name the pictures in either Standard English or Dundonian. You are free to choose which language variety to use for each picture. However, please do not use the same language variety throughout the whole task.”. The instructions will be followed by a short demonstration of the task before completing a short practice block consisting of 8 trials. Finally, the participant will perform the experimental block(s).

Each trial will start with a fixation cross in the middle of the screen. After 250 ms, the fixation cross will be replaced by the stimulus for a maximum of 3000 ms. Each trial will end with a brief 50 ms blank screen before the onset of the next trial.

Data analyses

The raw data and analyses scripts will be available on the Open Science Framework.

The first trial in each voluntary language switching block will be excluded from both the error analyses and reaction time (RT) analyses, since this is neither a switch nor repetition trial. Furthermore, error trials and trials immediately following an error will be excluded from the RT analyses. Trials with RTs faster than 150 ms, slower than 3000 ms, or three standard deviations above participant mean will also be removed.

Similar to previous bilingual voluntary language switching studies (e.g., [9, 10]), we will provide an overview of the mean switch rate of the participants in all conditions. Furthermore, two analyses will be conducted on the RT and error data. The switch analyses will be conducted on the data of the voluntary language switching blocks and will consist of Trial type (switch vs. repetition trials) and Language variety (Standard English vs. Dundonian). The mix analyses will be conducted on the single language blocks and the repetition trials in the voluntary language switching blocks. The latter analyses will consist of Block type (repetition trials from voluntary language switching blocks vs. trials from single language block) and Language variety (Standard English vs. Dundonian).

The RTs will be analyzed using linear mixed-effects regression modeling [50]. Furthermore, the error data will be analyzed, if we observe enough errors for meaningful analysis (> 5%), using logistic mixed-effects regression modeling [51]. Both participants and items will be considered random factors with all fixed effects and their interactions varying by all random factors [52]. Yet, convergence issues will be taken into account—we will rely on the buildmer package [53] to simplify the model where such issues are encountered. For all two-level factors we will be using effect coding (i.e., -0.5 and 0.5). Finally, t- and z-values larger or equal to 1.96 were deemed significant [54].

Supporting information

S1 Appendix. Proposed standard English and Dundonian non-cognate stimuli.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(16.7KB, docx)}

Data Availability

All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.

Funding Statement

This research is funded by a Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland Research Incentive Grant (https://www.carnegie-trust.org/) awarded to NWK (RIG009864). The funders had and will not have a role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256554.r001

Decision Letter 0

Veronica Whitford

10 Jun 2021

PONE-D-21-10597

Is it easier to use one language variety at a time, or mix them? An investigation of voluntary language switching with bidialectals.

Dear Dr. Kirk,

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

The manuscript should describe the methods in sufficient detail to prevent undisclosed flexibility in the experimental procedure or analysis pipeline, including sufficient outcome-neutral conditions (e.g. necessary controls, absence of floor or ceiling effects) to test the proposed hypotheses and a statistical power analysis where applicable. As there may be aspects of the methodology and analysis which can only be refined once the work is undertaken, authors should outline potential assumptions and explicitly describe what aspects of the proposed analyses, if any, are exploratory.

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: I state that the protocol is "partly" technically sound and planned. I have asked that the authors include a few things that would be important for both replicability and in adding to their research. Most importantly, the authors should justify the block order chosen with respect to the single- and mixed-language blocks. Second, the authors should specify how they will determine significance in their mixed-effects models. Third, I suggest that the authors include additional covariates (mean switch rate, self-rated measures from the questionnaire) as covariates in their analyses. Last, I recommend that the authors include additional non-linguistic tasks of switching and proactive/reactive cognitive control, at the very least to understand the participants better, but ideally to also include as covariates in their analyses, particularly because proactive control plays a crucial role in their hypotheses regarding the mixing benefit. Detailed comments are provided in the attached document.

Reviewer #2: This registered report aims to test if there is a switch cost and mixing benefit in a voluntary language switch paradigm in bidialectals. This topic is potentially interesting but I have some concerns which I hope the authors could address.

--First of all it is not entirely clear what is a theoretical motivation to test bidialectals in a voluntary language switch paradigm. The authors reviewed the literature on bilinguals in involuntary and voluntary language switching paradigms, and bidialectals in involuntary switching paradigm. The reason that just no one has done it before does not make it a theoretical interesting topic to look at. Related to the point, what differences would you expect there will be between bidialectals vs bilinguals? And why you think there will be differences? Alternatively, based on the literature, it sounds like bidialectals are by and large similar to bilinguals, so what is the point to test bidialectals then? I’m not saying this topic is not potentially interesting, it is just in general, the theoretical motivation is not entirely clear.

--The authors also indicated in the literature review that whether switch cost is asymmetrical or symmetrical could be related to language proficiency, at least in involuntary switching paradigms. It is not entirely clear how language proficiency could be affecting the switch cost in the voluntary switch paradigms, although the authors predict that they will see symmetrical switch cost. On a related note, there will be only 20 pictures in this experiment, and there will be a familiarization phase. This is essentially boosting proficiency of names of these particular pictures to a very high level, which would not represent the true language proficiency. I hope the authors could consider using more pictures, and reconsider the use of the familiarization block.

--Related to the above point, although the mixed blocks will be in the middle of two single language blocks. I wonder if the authors are concerned with the potential repetition effect. For instance, by the last mixed blocks, participants will have seen the same pictures 8 times, and they will be way too familiar with these pictures, which will significantly decrease their reaction time and error rate.

--That being said, I think the error rate will be too low to show any meaningful results with the current design (i.e., ceiling effect). Additionally, if the authors really want to analyze error rates, they should also separate them out into regular errors (e.g., use a word that does not match the picture), and incorrect language errors for single blocks at least.

**********

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Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr. Michael A. Johns

Reviewer #2: No

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PLoS One. 2021 Sep 8;16(9):e0256554. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256554.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

30 Jun 2021

Dear Veronica Whitford,

We are sending you the revised version of our manuscript named “Is it easier to use one language variety at a time, or mix them? An investigation of voluntary language switching with bidialectals”. We are grateful for the comments by the reviewers and incorporated them where possible.

A detailed point-to-point response to the questions of the reviewers is provided below. Where appropriate a reference to the respective changes in the manuscript is given and the major changes are highlighted in the manuscript (word count of manuscript: 3159).

Reviewer 1

1. Most importantly, the authors should justify the block order chosen with respect to the single- and mixed-language blocks.

Reply: As indicated in Declerck (2020), there are five methodological ways in which single- and mixed-language blocks can be presented to participants, all of them have strengths and drawbacks relative to the others. We chose our setup because that is what several previous voluntary language switching studies have used (e.g., de Bruin et al., 2018, 2020; Jevtović et al., 2020). Since we are mainly interested to see if we can observe a similar pattern as bilingual language switching studies, we used a similar methodology as these studies. This information has been added to the revised manuscript (pages 11).

2. Have the authors considered looking at performance over time as a function of trial number?

In addition, I might also recommend the use of the buildmer (Voeten, 2021) package in R for the automatic simplification and testing of both random and fixed effects.

Reply: We did not consider looking at performance over time as a main analysis, as we are not sure that this would impact our effect of interest (i.e., mixing benefit). Considering that the mixing benefit should be a measure of proactive language control, and thus a top down, anticipatory control process that is assumed to be implemented over an extended period, we do not think that it would substantially change over time, but this is something we may consider as an exploratory analysis.

Regarding buildmer, we suggested using the same strategy that we used in previous studies for simplifying the model when encountering a convergence issue (see footnote 2 in the original submission). However, we thank you for this very useful suggestion and agree that the buildmer package would be better to simplify the model. Hence, we have changed this in the revised manuscript (footnote 2 on page 13).

3. How will the significance of fixed effects terms be determined?

Reply: This is a good question, since we forgot to add this to the original submission! Similar to our previous studies (e.g., Declerck, Ivanova, Grainger, & Duñabeitia, 2020; Declerck, Wen, Snell, Meade, & Grainger, 2019), we deem t- and z-values larger or equal to 1.96 significant (Baayen, 2008). This information has now been added to the manuscript (page 13).

4. Will the authors examine any covariates in their analyses, such as including mean switch rate or self-rated measures from the questionnaire?

Reply: We did not plan to do this, as previous bilingual voluntary language switching studies also did not include any additional covariates. We may include covariates as additional exploratory analyses, but unless they help us explain our main question (Is language control similar across bidialectals and bilinguals?), we do not plan to include these analyses at this point in time.

5. Last, I recommend that the authors include additional non-linguistic tasks of switching and proactive/reactive cognitive control, at the very least to understand the participants better, but ideally to also include as covariates in their analyses, particularly because proactive control plays a crucial role in their hypotheses regarding the mixing benefit.

Reply: We agree that this would be interesting but see this as a part of a potential follow up study, beyond the scope of our proposed study. In the current study, our objective is to establish whether a similar pattern can be observed with bidialectals when voluntary language switching as with bilinguals. To this end, we want to see if we can observe a similar pattern with bidialectals during voluntary language switching.

Including non-linguistic tasks and comparing those results to our bidialectal switching results would not immediately address our main question, since we know from the bilingual language control literature that studies about shared bilingual and non-linguistic control processes do not always provide a straightforward answer (e.g., Branzi, Calabria, Boscarino, & Costa, 2016; Calabria, Hernandez, Branzi, & Costa, 2012; Declerck et al., 2021). Yet, we think this is an interesting line of enquiry and is definitely an avenue that we will consider for our future research.

Reviewer 2

1. First of all it is not entirely clear what is a theoretical motivation to test bidialectals in a voluntary language switch paradigm. The authors reviewed the literature on bilinguals in involuntary and voluntary language switching paradigms, and bidialectals in involuntary switching paradigm. The reason that just no one has done it before does not make it a theoretical interesting topic to look at. Related to the point, what differences would you expect there will be between bidialectals vs bilinguals? And why you think there will be differences? Alternatively, based on the literature, it sounds like bidialectals are by and large similar to bilinguals, so what is the point to test bidialectals then? I’m not saying this topic is not potentially interesting, it is just in general, the theoretical motivation is not entirely clear.

Reply: It is not a given that bidialectals and bilinguals rely on similar control processes. Several studies have provided evidence against the notion that control processes are shared during language processing. In turn, this provides evidence against the theoretical assumption that language control is domain general (e.g., Green, 1998; Meuter & Allport, 1999). We have made this motivation clearer now in the introduction (page 6).

It is true that the few studies that investigated bidialectals found similar effects as bilinguals (e.g., asymmetrical switch costs and mixing costs). However, it should be noted that only a handful of studies have looked into this issue, making additional research a necessity (one would not draw firm conclusions from about 5 studies). Second, the effects that have been observed so far with both bidialectals and bilinguals, and thus have been taken as evidence for an overlap, have also been found in a myriad of non-bilingual and even non-linguistic contexts. The mixing benefit in voluntary language switching seems to be unique to bilingual voluntary language switching. Hence, we think that investigating this effect will provide a strong indication whether bidialectals rely on similar control processes as bilinguals.

To further strengthen the motivation for this study, we have also included a new section in the introduction outlining some of the implications that can arise as a result of not properly accounting for bidialectal language experience, namely, that some speakers might be erroneously categorized as monolingual because sociolinguistic factors can influence how much prestige and recognition is given to the dialect (see pages 7-8).

2. The authors also indicated in the literature review that whether switch cost is asymmetrical or symmetrical could be related to language proficiency, at least in involuntary switching paradigms. It is not entirely clear how language proficiency could be affecting the switch cost in the voluntary switch paradigms, although the authors predict that they will see symmetrical switch cost. On a related note, there will be only 20 pictures in this experiment, and there will be a familiarization phase. This is essentially boosting proficiency of names of these particular pictures to a very high level, which would not represent the true language proficiency. I hope the authors could consider using more pictures, and reconsider the use of the familiarization block.

Reply: Language proficiency should not immensely affect the outcome of (a)symmetrical switch costs during voluntary language switching, according to the interpretation that Gollan and Ferreira (2009) gave for their symmetrical switch costs in a voluntary language switching study. We have made this clearer now in the introduction (page 4).

Unfortunately, we have exhausted all possible depictable noncognate words between Dundonian Scots and Standard English. Hence, we will not be able to increase the number of stimuli. Yet, we do not believe that this is a major issue. Plenty of bilingual language switching studies have relied on far less stimuli and still found asymmetrical switch costs (e.g., Meuter & Allport, 1999) and mixing costs (e.g., Stasenko, Matt, & Gollan, 2017) with the cued language switching paradigm. Moreover, using a similar methodology and 20 stimuli, Jevtović and colleagues (2019) found the same pattern that we aim to investigate. A similar argument could be made for the familiarization block (e.g., Li & Gollan, 2021; Peeters & Dijkstra, 2018), with which we have even found asymmetrical switch costs with bidialectals in an involuntary language switching paradigm (Kirk et al., 2018, 2021). Grunden et al. (2020) also used a familiarization block in their bilingual voluntary language switching study, and still observed a mixing benefit. Since previous research indicates that neither 20 stimuli nor a familiarization block are detrimental to observing the effects we are interested in, we would keep both these features of our setup.

3. Related to the above point, although the mixed blocks will be in the middle of two single language blocks. I wonder if the authors are concerned with the potential repetition effect. For instance, by the last mixed blocks, participants will have seen the same pictures 8 times, and they will be way too familiar with these pictures, which will significantly decrease their reaction time and error rate.

Reply: The mixed language blocks will benefit more, relative to the first single language block, and less, relative to the last single language block, from any potential repetition effects. Hence, this repetition effect should be balanced out to a large degree by the block order. Furthermore, studies with far less stimuli (< 10 stimuli) than the proposed current study (20 stimuli) have shown evidence for a mixing cost with cued language switching (e.g., Stasenko et al., 2017) and alternating language switching (e.g., Declerck, Philipp, & Koch, 2013). More to the point for the current study is that several previous bilingual voluntary language switching studies have shown a mixing benefit with the same (Jevtović et al., 2019), or a similar (de Bruin et al., 2018), number of stimuli and a similar setup. Hence, if similar control processes are implemented by bilinguals and bidialectals, then we should observe a similar outcome (i.e., mixing benefit) as those methodologically similar bilingual studies.

4. That being said, I think the error rate will be too low to show any meaningful results with the current design (i.e., ceiling effect). Additionally, if the authors really want to analyze error rates, they should also separate them out into regular errors (e.g., use a word that does not match the picture), and incorrect language errors for single blocks at least.

Reply: We agree that the error rate will probably be too low to show meaningful results. For this reason, we included the following sentence in the original submission: “Furthermore, the error data will be analyzed, if we observe enough errors for meaningful analysis (> 5%), using logistic mixed-effects regression modeling (Jaeger, 2008).” (page 12).

We also agree that it makes sense to differentiate between lexical errors and language errors in cued language switching studies. However, we are not sure that this also applies to voluntary language switching studies, as it is unclear whether the participant will have produced in the correct or incorrect language variety in the mixed language block. We acknowledge that the reviewer wants us to use this specific error coding for single language blocks, but it is unclear what we would gain from this, as the single language block performance is compared to the mixed language block performance. Since it does not make sense to compare the error rate of, for example, language errors in single language blocks to the overall error rate in mixed language blocks, we did not include this adjusted error coding schema in the revised manuscript.

Additional changes

1. We have added more information about Scots, as this will provide more sociolinguistic context for the reader regarding the status of this language variety in Scotland (page 8).

We would like to thank you and the reviewers for these helpful comments. We hope you find our revision and response to the reviewers’ comments satisfactory.

Sincerely,

Mathieu Declerck and Neil W. Kirk

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PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256554.r003

Decision Letter 1

Veronica Whitford

10 Aug 2021

Is it easier to use one language variety at a time, or mix them? An investigation of voluntary language switching with bidialectals.

PONE-D-21-10597R1

Dear Dr. Kirk,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Veronica Whitford, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Does the manuscript provide a valid rationale for the proposed study, with clearly identified and justified research questions?

The research question outlined is expected to address a valid academic problem or topic and contribute to the base of knowledge in the field.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Is the protocol technically sound and planned in a manner that will lead to a meaningful outcome and allow testing the stated hypotheses?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Is the methodology feasible and described in sufficient detail to allow the work to be replicable?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors described where all data underlying the findings will be made available when the study is complete?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

You may also provide optional suggestions and comments to authors that they might find helpful in planning their study.

(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I would like to thank the authors for addressing my comments in this revision. With regards to my main comments:

1) The justification for the chosen block order is understandable, thank you for clarifying. It is indeed a good decision to match the methodology to previous language-switching studies, so I have no further issues with this.

2) You would be surprised what processes can change throughout the course of a single task! Though I completely understand this line of thought, that proactive control should be more-or-less executed at the task level. If you do end up looking at this, even just a graph, and find something interesting, do let me know.

3) This is perhaps my only remaining issue, but one that is very easily addressed. While it is true that a t- or z- value greater than ~1.96 suggests significance, I believe it is also important to do some further model testing. Specifically, the authors could perform model comparisons using the anova() function in R to compare a model with the effect of interest to a model without the effect of interest, with all other variables staying the same. The anova() function performs a chi-squared test on the residual variance and indicated whether including the effect of interest significantly improves model fit. Other ways to do this are using the AIC or BIC values (smaller values are better fitting models), using the Anova() (capital A!) function in the car library in R to perform an omnibus test, or--the most convenient--using buildmer, which will automatically perform testing of each effect via backwards elimination. I recommend using Satterthwaite ddf, which is an argument that can be changed in the buildmer function (the default is Wald, which is also acceptable). Whatever paths the authors may choose, I ask that they simply perform so further model criticisms aside from just relying on the t- or z- values from the model. Pairing this with another method described above would be excellent, as well.

4) Again, this is understandable, that you would want to keep the methodology similar to previous language-switching studies. Do keep in mind these variables for post-hoc and follow-up analyses, however, as individual differences can go a long way in soaking up variance that may inadvertently make it into the fixed effects.

5) Again, this is understandable to match prior studies. As you mention, however, I hope that you do keep it in mind in your future research, if only to satisfy the curiosity of readers (and reviewers).

Reviewer #2: The authors have addressed my previous concerns. The study design is sound and the topic is interesting. I don't have any further comments.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256554.r004

Acceptance letter

Veronica Whitford

20 Aug 2021

PONE-D-21-10597R1

Is it easier to use one language variety at a time, or mix them? An investigation of voluntary language switching with bidialectals.

Dear Dr. Kirk:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org.

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Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Veronica Whitford

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

S1 Appendix. Proposed standard English and Dundonian non-cognate stimuli.

(DOCX)

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Submitted filename: PONE-D-21-10597 Reviewer Comments.docx

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Data Availability Statement

All relevant data from this study will be made available upon study completion.

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Is it easier to use one language variety at a time, or mix them? An investigation of voluntary language switching with bidialectals

Mathieu Declerck

Neil W Kirk

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Veronica Whitford

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Decision Letter 1

Veronica Whitford

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Veronica Whitford

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PERMALINK

Is it easier to use one language variety at a time, or mix them? An investigation of voluntary language switching with bidialectals

Mathieu Declerck

Neil W Kirk

Roles

Abstract

Introduction

Method

Participants

Materials and task

Procedure

Data analyses

Supporting information

Data Availability

Funding Statement

References

Decision Letter 0

Veronica Whitford

Roles

Author response to Decision Letter 0

Decision Letter 1

Veronica Whitford

Roles

Acceptance letter

Veronica Whitford

Roles

Associated Data

Supplementary Materials

Data Availability Statement

ACTIONS

PERMALINK

RESOURCES

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