Amrhein, P. C. (1999).

On the functional equivalence of monolinguals and bilinguals in

“monolingual mode.” Psychological Science, 10:3, 230-236.

Previous evidence indicates that bilinguals are slowed when an unexpected language switch occurs when they
are reading aloud. This anticipation effect was investigated using a picture-word translation task to compare
English monolinguals and Spanish- English bilinguals functioning in “monolingual mode.” Monolinguals and
half of the bilinguals drew pictures or wrote English words for picture or English word stimuli; the remaining
bilinguals drew pictures or wrote Spanish words for picture or Spanish word stimuli. Production onset latency
was longer in cross-modality translation than within-modality copying, and the increments were equivalent
between groups across stimulus and production modalities. Assessed within participants, bilinguals were
slower than monolinguals under intermixed but not under blocked trial conditions. Results indicate that
the bilingual anticipation effect is not specific to language-mixing tasks. More generally, stimulus-processing
uncertainty prevents establishment of a “base” symbolic-system procedure (concerning
recognition, production, and intervening translation) and the inhibition of others. When this uncertainty is
removed, bilinguals exhibit functional equivalence to monolinguals.

In this paper, Amrhein reports on an experiment wherein monolingual English

and bilingual Spanish-English subjects had to complete one of four tasks: translate words

into pictures, translate pictures into words, copy pictures from pictures, or copy words

from words. The Spanish-English bilinguals were divided in half, and for each group, the

stimulus materials contained and required the use of only one of their two languages.

This was done in an attempt to see if bilinguals could perform like monolinguals on

symbolic translation tasks when only one of their languages was required.

Specifically, the author wanted to test the effect of blocking where the same

response to a given stimulus was required on each trial versus mixing where different

responses to stimuli were required on different trials. The reason for this is that bilinguals

perform more slowly on tasks that require unpredictable language switches, which the

author refers to as the anticipation effect. He wanted to see if, when language was held

constant, bilinguals would still respond more slowly than monolinguals on unpredictable

symbolic translation switches; that is, do they still show an anticipation effect. The

existence of an anticipation effect when language is held constant would indicate that this

effect applies to bilinguals’ general symbolic processing and not just to symbolic

processing involving language.

 The subjects in the study were 16 proficient Spanish-English bilinguals and 16

monolingual English speakers. Half of the bilinguals and all of the monolinguals saw

English words and pictures and wrote words in English or drew pictures. The other half

of the bilinguals saw Spanish words or pictures and wrote Spanish words or drew

pictures. The author claims that subprocesses that are believed to underlie the tasks are

reflected by the onset latency of subjects’ responses, and he develops several complex-

looking equations to model these processes. These subprocesses include the following:

1) time to encode the stimulus into it corresponding symbolic format processor, 2) time to

transfer the encoded concept from one modality to another (if necessary) 3) time to

retrieve from the processor the graphic (for pictorial-format processing) or orthographic

(for word-format processing) form to be draw/written, and 4) time to prepare for and

initiate production.

On different days, participants were shown either blocked or mixed

pictures/words, though I had difficulty understanding what the author meant by blocked.

Did he mean that in one block participants only saw pictures and drew pictures (or only

saw words wrote words, only saw pictures wrote words, only saw words drew pictures),

or did he mean saw pictures and words but responded in the same way to each (always

drew pictures or always wrote words regardless of stimulus modality). That is to say,

what was blocked: the presentation, the response, or both? Understanding this is quite

critical to being able to interpret the results for oneself rather than just relying on the

author’s interpretation. Unfortunately, I was unable to discover exactly what he meant by

blocked.
 The results showed that bilinguals and monolinguals performed the same in

blocked conditions but that bilinguals were significantly slower than monolinguals in

responding under the mixed condition. This indicates that even when only one of a

bilingual’s languages is in use, the anticipation effect is present. As noted, this suggests

that the anticipation effect applies to bilinguals’ general symbolic processing and not just

to symbolic processing involving language. However, the fact that the anticipation effect

disappeared under the blocked condition suggests that bilinguals can establish a

symbolic-system procedure to facilitate responding when the stimulus and response

modalities are consistent (perhaps as when they know they only need to communicate

one of their languages).

As Juliana pointed out in her summary, I thought the number of bilinguals was

too small, and I thought there should have been an equal number of bilinguals in each of

the two conditions in the experiment. However, even 16 per group seems to be too small

a number. Like Juliana, I also found it impossible to be certain what the author meant by

the blocked condition, something that is actually quite critical to fully understanding and

appreciating the results.

The problems with the study aside, I thought this was an interesting paper in that

the author considers processing time costs associated with subprocesses in picture

naming tasks that we do not typically even think about. Though those subprocesses may

not be relevant to our work (indeed, they might not be real subprocesses at all, but the

accuracy of the regression equation including all those factors suggests that they may be

indeed be quite ‘real’), I think it is important to keep in mind that they perhaps exist and

may bear on results obtained in the kinds of studies we are currently doing with the WPI
tasks. In fact, it may be that the delay in naming we see in older adults could be modeled

as reflecting a delay in one of the subprocesses Amrhein lays out.