Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:

Language-switch costs, which denote worse performance in language-switch than in language-repetition trials, appear to be a robust finding in bilingual language switching. The aim of the present study was to examine the intraindividual reliability of language-switch costs by means of a number-naming task with German-English bilinguals.

Design/methodology/approach:

In a cued language-switching paradigm, participants (n = 36) switched between German and English. They performed a number-naming task in three different conditions: one-digit numbers; two-digit numbers with decade 10; and two-digit numbers with decade 20.

Data and analysis:

We examined the experimental effects with an analysis of variance (reaction time and error rate as the dependent variables), using trial language, language sequence and number condition as independent variables. In addition, we calculated the split-half reliability of language-switch costs (across all conditions) as well as the correlations of language-switch costs between the different conditions.

Findings/conclusions:

While significant language-switch costs emerged in all three number conditions, our results demonstrate a medium-sized correlation between the three experimental conditions. The split-half reliability shows a moderate to strong correlation between the odd- and even-numbered trials in the experiment.

Originality:

On the one hand, the present study extends the observation of language-switch costs from one-digit number naming to the more complex naming of two-digit numbers. On the other hand, and theoretically even more important, we explored the reliability of language-switch costs in a bilingual number-naming task by calculating both split-half reliability and correlations between different number conditions.

Significance/implications:

The results indicated that while language-switch costs are a robust experimental effect on the group level, they appear to be less well suited for correlational approaches. This also suggests that caution should be exerted when language-switch costs are used to diagnose the ability of an individual to perform language control.

中文翻译：

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一位数和两位数双语数字命名中语言转换成本的可靠性

目的和宗旨/目的/研究问题：

语言转换成本表示双语转换的性能要比语言重复试验中的性能差，这似乎是双语语言转换中的一个强有力的发现。本研究的目的是通过使用德语-英语双语者的数字命名任务来检验语言转换成本的个体内可靠性。

设计/方法/方法：

在提示的语言切换范例中，参与者（n = 36）在德语和英语之间切换。他们在三种不同的条件下执行了数字命名任务：一位数字；十进制10的两位数；和两位数字，十进制为20。

数据与分析：

我们使用方言，语言序列和数字条件作为自变量，通过方差分析（反应时间和错误率作为因变量）检查了实验效果。此外，我们计算了语言转换成本（在所有条件下）的半分割可靠性，以及不同条件之间语言转换成本的相关性。

结果/结论：

尽管在所有三个数字条件下都出现了大量的语言转换成本，但我们的结果表明，在三个实验条件之间存在中等大小的相关性。在实验中，半数可靠性显示了奇数和偶数试验之间的中度到强相关性。

独创性：

一方面，本研究将语言转换成本的观察范围从一位数字命名扩展到更复杂的两位数字命名。另一方面，从理论上讲，更重要的是，我们通过计算对分可靠性和不同数字条件之间的相关性，探索了双语数字命名任务中语言转换成本的可靠性。

意义/含义：

结果表明，尽管语言转换成本在小组水平上是一项强大的实验效果，但它们似乎不太适合相关方法。这也表明，当使用语言转换成本来诊断个人进行语言控制的能力时，应格外小心。