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What causes the bilingual disadvantage in verbal uency? The dual-task

analogy

TIFFANY C. SANDOVAL, TAMAR H. GOLLAN, VICTOR S. FERREIRA and DAVID P. SALMON

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition / Volume 13 / Issue 02 / April 2010, pp 231 - 252
DOI: 10.1017/S1366728909990514, Published online: 06 January 2010

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1366728909990514

How to cite this article:

TIFFANY C. SANDOVAL, TAMAR H. GOLLAN, VICTOR S. FERREIRA and DAVID P. SALMON (2010). What causes the
bilingual disadvantage in verbal uency? The dual-task analogy. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, pp 231-252
doi:10.1017/S1366728909990514

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Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 13 (2), 2010, 231–252 
C Cambridge University Press 2010 doi:10.1017/S1366728909990514 231

T I F FA N Y C . S A N D OVA L
What causes the bilingual University of California San Diego,
disadvantage in verbal fluency? San Diego State University
TA M A R H . G O L L A N
The dual-task analogy∗ V I C TO R S . F E R R E I R A
DAV I D P. SA L M O N
University of California San Diego

(Received: September 18, 2008; Revised: December 2, 2008; Accepted: December 8, 2008; First published online 6 January 2010)

We investigated the consequences of bilingualism for verbal fluency by comparing bilinguals to monolinguals, and dominant
versus non-dominant-language fluency. In Experiment 1, bilinguals produced fewer correct responses, slower first response
times and proportionally delayed retrieval, relative to monolinguals. In Experiment 2, similar results were obtained
comparing the dominant to the non-dominant languages within bilinguals. Additionally, bilinguals produced significantly
lower-frequency words and a greater proportion of cognate responses than monolinguals, and bilinguals produced more
cross-language intrusion errors when speaking the non-dominant language, but almost no such intrusions when speaking the
dominant language. These results support an analogy between bilingualism and dual-task effects (Rohrer et al., 1995),
implying a role for between-language interference in explaining the bilingual fluency disadvantage, and suggest that
bilingual fluency will be maximized under testing conditions that minimize such interference. More generally, the findings
suggest a role for selection by competition in language production, and that such competition is more influential in relatively
unconstrained production tasks.

Introduction 2007), name pictures more slowly (Gollan, Montoya,

Fennema-Notestine and Morris, 2005), experience more
Throughout the world, many people routinely use more
tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) retrieval failures (Gollan and
than one language to communicate (Moreno and Kutas,
Silverberg, 2001) and have reduced verbal fluency
2005), and they seem to carry the roughly doubled load
(Gollan, Montoya and Werner, 2002; Rosselli et al.,
associated with bilingualism without apparent difficulty.
2000). Importantly, bilinguals are relatively less fluent
Bilingualism is somewhat less common in the United
than monolinguals, even when tested exclusively in their
States, but the number of bilinguals is substantial
dominant (Gollan and Acenas, 2004, Gollan, Bonanni and
(approximately 20 percent of the population) and rapidly
Montoya, 2005) and first-learned language (Ivanova and
increasing (US Census, 2000). The existence of both
Costa, 2008; Ransdell and Fischler, 1987).
bilingualism and monolingualism provides an opportunity
Although recent work confirms the presence of a
to examine the mechanisms of language production by
bilingual disadvantage in the verbal fluency task (e.g.,
asking how bilingualism influences the ability to rapidly
Portocarrero, Burright, and Donovick, 2007; Bialystok,
produce words in each language.
Craik and Luk, 2008a), the mechanism explaining this
Bilinguals seem to effortlessly use both languages
disadvantage remains unclear. In the fluency task (see,
at high levels of proficiency in daily language use.
e.g., Benton, Hamsher and Sivan, 1983), speakers are
However, bilingualism does introduce some processing
typically given one minute to name members of a semantic
costs. Compared to monolinguals, bilinguals name fewer
(e.g., “animals”) or letter category (e.g., “words that begin
pictures on standardized tests such as the Boston Naming
with s”). Perhaps the most obvious possible difference
Test (Roberts, Garcia, Desrochers and Hernandez, 2002;
between bilinguals and monolinguals that could explain
Gollan, Fennema-Notestine, Montoya and Jernigan,
the bilingual disadvantage is that only bilinguals may need
to simultaneously retrieve target language exemplars
* This research was supported by a Predoctoral Individual National while controlling interference from the non-target
Research Service Award from NIA (F31AG028971) to Tiffany language. Unintended activation of words from the non-
Sandoval, by an R01 from NICHD (HD050287) and a Career target language could delay retrieval of target language
Development Award from NIDCD (DC00191), both awarded to Tamar
exemplars, thus leading bilinguals to produce fewer
H. Gollan, by an R01 from NIH (HD051030) awarded to Victor
S. Ferreira, and by a P50 (AG05131) from NIH/NIA to the University correct responses than monolinguals. A related alternative
of California. possibility is that bilinguals simply retrieve target

Address for correspondence:

Tamar H. Gollan, University of California, San Diego, Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Research Center, 9500 Gilman Drive #0949,
La Jolla, California 92093–0949, USA
tgollan@ucsd.edu
232 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon
language exemplars more slowly than monolinguals, but
without any direct interference from the non-target lan-
guage (e.g., Gollan, Montoya, Cera and Sandoval, 2008).
A third, and qualitatively distinct, mechanism that could
also lead to a bilingual fluency disadvantage is between-
group differences in language-specific vocabulary
knowledge. Bilinguals clearly know many more words
than monolinguals when words from both languages
are counted, but within each language bilinguals may
know fewer names than monolinguals (e.g., Bialystok
et al., 2008a; Gollan and Acenas, 2004; Gollan and
Brown, 2006). Of course, it is possible that more than one
mechanism concurrently affects bilingual verbal fluency
(i.e., that these accounts are not mutually exclusive), in
which case the question can then be framed as to which
mechanism is primarily responsible for producing the
reported bilingual disadvantage in verbal fluency.
To distinguish between the three alternative accounts
of the bilingual disadvantage (interference between
languages, retrieval slowing without interference, and
reduced vocabulary), it is useful to consider the qualitative
aspects of responses produced. Although all three
mechanisms can explain the bilingual disadvantage, they
make distinct predictions in terms of how bilingualism
should influence retrieval time-course, the average word-
frequency count of exemplars produced, and the rate of
cross-language intrusions.
Retrieval slowing with interference between languages:
the dual-task analogy
A common assumption in models of bilingual language
processing is the notion of active interference between
languages (Green, 1998; for reviews of the evidence
for and against the interference assumption, see Costa
2005; Kroll, Bobb and Wodniecka, 2006; Kroll, Bobb,
Misra and Guo, 2008; La Heij, 2005). On this view,
bilinguals cannot “turn one language off” to effectively
act as monolingual speakers. As such, when bilinguals
speak one language, the other language continues to
be active and must be inhibited. Some of the most
compelling evidence that bilingualism entails a constant
exercise in inhibitory control comes indirectly in the
form of enhanced executive control mechanisms for
bilinguals throughout the lifespan. For example, bilingual
children performed better than monolingual children
on a card-sorting task (Bialystok and Martin, 2004),
in which participants need to switch from previously
learned sorting rules (e.g., color) to new rules (e.g.,
shape). Similarly, older bilinguals outperformed age-
matched monolinguals on a Simon task (Bilaystok, Craik,
Klein and Viswanathan, 2004; see also Bialystok, Craik
and Ryan, 2006; Craik and Bialystok, 2006; Bialystok,
2005), in which participants attempt to follow a rule
(e.g., press the right key when you see a red square)
when it is presented either congruently (on the right
side) or incongruently (on the left) with a competing
prepotent cue (side of the screen). A similar advantage
was recently reported in young adult bilinguals at the peak
of their attentional control abilities (using the Attentional
Network Task; Costa, Hernandez and Sebastián-Gallés,
2008). Finally, more recent evidence associates bi- or
multilingualism with “cognitive reserve” and a delay in
age- or dementia-related cognitive decline (Bialystok,
Craik and Freedman, 2007; Kavé, Eyal, Shorek and
Cohen-Mansfield, 2008). Such bilingual advantages are
typically attributed to the need to control the non-target
language each time bilinguals speak. By implication,
bilingual advantages in such tasks imply selection by
competition and the use of general mechanisms of
executive control for resolving competition in lexical
selection.
In studies of bilingual language processing, the role of
inhibitory control has been more controversial, sometimes
revealing evidence for (e.g., Hermans, Bongaerts, De
Bot and Schreuder, 1998) and other times evidence
against (e.g., Costa and Carmazza, 1999) competition
for selection between languages. Some experimental
findings suggest that dominant language production is
relatively immune to competition between languages
(Gollan, Montoya et al., 2005; Gollan et al., 2008),
particularly in balanced bilinguals (e.g., Costa and
Caramazza, 1999; Costa and Santesteban, 2004). Notably,
a similar debate is active within studies of monolingual
language production, with some arguing for the notion
of competition for selection between semantically related
lexical representations (e.g., Levelt, Roelofs and Meyer,
1999), and others arguing against such competition (e.g.,
Costa, Alario and Caramazza, 2005).
Although inhibitory control may play a limited role (or
no role; Finkbeiner, Almeida, Janssen and Caramazza,
2006) in picture naming in the dominant language (e.g.,
Gollan, Montoya et al., 2005; Gollan et al., 2008), the
role of inhibitory control may be greater in other tasks.
For example, language mixing has relatively little effect
on non-dominant language production, but a powerful
effect on dominant language production (e.g., Meuter
and Allport, 1999), in some cases leading language
dominance to reverse (such that bilinguals name pictures
more quickly in their usually non-dominant language;
e.g., Christoffels, Firk and Schiller, 2007). Dominance
reversal implies a strong role for inhibitory control of the
dominant language during language mixing (Kroll et al.,
2008; Gollan & Ferreira, 2009) and, by extension, support
for the assumption of competition for selection between
languages.
The majority of studies designed to test the interference
account have used the picture-naming task. The verbal
fluency task differs from picture naming in important
ways and affords the possibility of viewing production

processes under a different magnifying glass. Picture-
naming tasks are relatively constrained in that speakers
must produce a single specific target word when provided
with a stimulus that activates a single concept. Once the
picture name is retrieved, the speaker can move on to
the next word and is again provided with a stimulus (a
different picture) that activates another single concept. In
contrast, in the verbal fluency task, speakers are given
a single cue (a category name) which activates multiple
concepts, and then they must select one name at a time,
selecting among several alternatives without being given
any additional cues to assist them in selecting one concept
over another, and while also needing to suppress just-
produced exemplars, and to continue to search their
lexicon to maintain production as fluently as possible.
Because natural language production no doubt also entails
simultaneous activation of multiple concepts and extended
production of more than a single word at a time, the
verbal fluency task is at least in some respects more
similar to natural production than is picture naming. Of
course picture naming is arguably more similar to natural
production in other respects, particularly considering
letter fluency (speakers seldom, if ever, need to produce
a sequence of words that begin with the same sound),
but also semantic fluency (e.g., sequences of content
words are not typically all semantically related). Given
that the verbal fluency task necessarily activates multiple
related lexical representations, it may be ideally suited
for revealing the possible effects of between-language
interference in bilinguals, and competition for selection
within languages in monolinguals.
Retrieval slowing without interference: the weaker
links account
A different view of bilingual disadvantages assumes that
bilingualism affects language production indirectly via
frequency of use. On this account, bilingual disadvantages
arise simply because bilinguals use each language only
some of the time, and therefore use words in each language
relatively less often than monolinguals, who use just one
language all the time (for detailed explanation, see Gollan
et al., 2008; see also Ivanova and Costa, 2008; Lehtonen
and Laine, 2003; Mägiste, 1979; Nicoladis, Palmer and
Marentette, 2007; Pearson, 1997; Ransdell and Fischler,
1987). This account has been called the “weaker links”
account to distinguish it from interference (Gollan et al.,
2008), and explains bilingual disadvantages in an emer-
gent way by relying on the well-established relationship
between degree of language use and lexical accessibility,
such that high-frequency words are accessed more quickly
than low-frequency words (e.g., Oldfield and Wingfield,
1965; Scarborough, Cortese and Scarborough, 1977).
The most direct evidence supporting the weaker
links account is that the bilingual disadvantage in
Bilingual verbal fluency 233
picture naming is greater when producing low-frequency
than high-frequency picture names (Gollan et al.,
2008; Ivanova and Costa, 2008). The greater bilingual
disadvantage for low-frequency words is expected,
according to the weaker links hypothesis, because low-
frequency words are more sensitive to small differences
in degree of use than high-frequency words (for review,
see Murray and Forster, 2004). Also consistent with
weaker links is that language dominance effects patterned
similarly; bilinguals named pictures in the less-frequently
used language more slowly than the dominant language,
but language dominance effects were especially large for
low-frequency words. A different way of stating both
results is to say that bilinguals showed a greater frequency
effect than monolinguals, and the non-dominant language
showed a greater frequency effect than the dominant
language. The increased size of the frequency effect
in bilinguals relative to monolinguals suggests that
bilinguals lag behind monolinguals in language-specific
language use. Because of a ceiling effect on the extent
to which increased frequency of use can increase lexical
accessibility (e.g., Griffin and Bock, 1998), decreased
language use associated with bilingualism leads to a
greater disadvantage for accessing low- rather than high-
frequency words.
To distinguish weaker links from interference
mechanisms of the bilingual advantage we examine
word-frequency counts of exemplars that bilinguals
and monolinguals produce. Having identified a greater
bilingual disadvantage for low-frequency words in picture
naming (Gollan et al., 2008; Ivanova and Costa, 2008),
the weaker links account predicts that bilinguals will be
less likely than monolinguals to retrieve low-frequency
words, and thus on average will produce higher-
frequency exemplars than monolinguals. The interference
hypothesis makes the opposite prediction concerning
word frequency. Because high-frequency words are more
readily accessible in both languages than low-frequency
words (e.g., most Spanish–English bilinguals know how
to say “carrot” in both languages, but they might
know “eggplant” in just one language), the possibility
for interference between languages should be greatest
for high-frequency words (for detailed explanation, see
Gollan et al., 2008). If competition between languages is
greater for high-frequency translations, then bilinguals
should produce fewer high-frequency exemplars than
monolinguals, and thus on average will produce lower-
frequency exemplars than monolinguals in the fluency
task (the opposite prediction of the weaker links account).
Note the counter-intuitive nature of this prediction, given
the finding that production of low-frequency words is
particularly difficult for bilinguals (Gollan et al., 2008;
Ivanova and Costa, 2008). Thus, the frequency of words
produced in the verbal fluency task provides a further
test of competition mechanisms and the possibility of
234 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon
distinguishing between the weaker links and interference
mechanisms of the bilingual fluency disadvantage1 .
If bilinguals and monolinguals differ with respect
to the word frequency of responses produced, it will
be important to determine whether this result could
be attributed to COGNATE status – translations that are
similar between languages (e.g., saxophone–saxofón).
Bilinguals produce cognates more easily than non-
cognates (Costa, Caramazza and Sebastián-Gallés, 2000;
Gollan and Acenas, 2004). If cognates are updated for
frequency in both languages each time they occur in
either language, then cognates will be about as high
frequency for bilinguals as they are for monolinguals,
non-cognates (in both languages) will be lower frequency
for bilinguals than they are for monolinguals, and
cognate frequencies in the bilingual lexicon would be
systematically underestimated by monolingual frequency
counts in terms of their rank order relative to non-
cognate frequencies. As such, below we consider whether
bilinguals produce more cognates than monolinguals, and
if so how this influences the frequency count of exemplars
produced by bilinguals and monolinguals. Consideration
of cognate status also provides an additional opportunity
to evaluate the possible effects of bilingualism on verbal
fluency; cognate effects would support the notion that
dual-language activation affects verbal fluency.
The reduced vocabulary hypothesis: the category size
analogy
The third alternative explanation for the bilingual verbal
fluency disadvantage is that bilinguals may be retrieving
words from a slightly smaller pool of exemplar names
than monolinguals. The fluency task typically restricts
responses to just one language (but see Gollan et al.,
2002; de Picciotto and Friedland, 2001), and within each
language, bilinguals may not know, or may be unable
to access, as many words as monolinguals. Supporting
the notion of vocabulary differences between bilinguals
and monolinguals, studies reveal that bilinguals have
lower receptive vocabulary scores than monolinguals
on standardized tests such as the Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test (PPVT; e.g., Bialystok, Craik and
1 Note that the interference account could be modified to accommodate
the findings by Gollan et al. (2008). Specifically, it might be suggested
that interference between languages is greatest when retrieving low-
frequency words which are more difficult to retrieve. In this case
the interference account would make similar predictions with respect
to response word frequency in the fluency task. Although there is
some evidence from studies of monolingual language production
suggesting greater effects of competition for selection for low-
frequency alternative names (e.g., limousine and limo) than for high-
frequency alternatives (e.g., TV and television; Spieler & Griffin, 2006;
but see Griffin, 2001) this interpretation of the interference account is
tentative at best given the lack of additional evidence to support it.
Luk, 2008b). Because comprehension generally precedes
production in lexical accessibility, any differences that
can be observed on comprehension-based measures (such
as the PPVT) will likely be present in tasks (like
verbal fluency) that require language production. In
both production and comprehension, reduced vocabulary
knowledge in bilinguals is likely to specifically reflect
reduced knowledge of relatively low-frequency words
(because higher-frequency words will be learned before
low-frequency words). Consistent with this notion, studies
of the TOT phenomenon (which focus exclusively on
production of very-low-frequency words, e.g., periscope)
suggest that bilinguals are more likely to fail to retrieve
a known word (have more TOTs) than monolinguals.
The same studies also show that bilinguals reported
recognizing fewer target words than monolinguals, that
is, they have reduced knowledge of low-frequency
vocabulary words in their dominant language relative
to monolinguals (Gollan and Silverberg, 2001; Gollan
and Acenas, 2004; Gollan, Bonanni and Montoya, 2005;
Gollan and Brown, 2006).
Thus, the reduced vocabulary hypothesis leads to
similar predictions as the weaker links account in terms
the frequency of exemplars. However, it is possible
to distinguish between weaker links and vocabulary
by examining the time-course of retrieval. Because
speakers produce progressively lower-frequency words
with increased time into the fluency trial (Crowe, 1998),
and bilinguals’ vocabulary knowledge is smaller at the
low-frequency end of the lexicon, the reduced vocabulary
mechanism predicts that the bilingual disadvantage should
be absent at the beginning of the trial, and should
emerge primarily towards the end of the fluency trial.
In contrast, the interference account predicts a robust
bilingual disadvantage at the beginning of the fluency trial
(where competition between languages is most likely), as
does the weaker links account, because, although smaller
for high-frequency words, a bilingual disadvantage was
observed for both high- and low-frequency words (Gollan,
Montoya et al., 2005; Gollan et al., 2008).
Measuring the time-course of retrieval: the fulcrum
point
To measure the retrieval time-course we rely on a
measure that was developed in the context of research
on monolingual verbal fluency performance. To this end,
we draw an analogy between the mechanisms of the
bilingual disadvantage and factors known to influence
fluency performance in monolinguals. The first analogy
is between the interference account and dual-task effects
on verbal fluency production. After a bilingual speaker
retrieves an exemplar in the target language, the search
for additional category members could easily trigger
activation of translation equivalents in the non-target

language. If bilinguals cannot prevent retrieval of
exemplar names from both languages, they would need
to monitor the language of output to avoid producing
cross-language intrusions. In contrast, monolinguals
need only retrieve category names in the one language
they know. On this view, the task demands associated
with verbal fluency are greater for bilinguals, who are
essentially engaged in two concurrent tasks.
Rohrer, Wixted, Salmon and Butters (1995) found
that when monolingual speakers were asked to produce
category members while concurrently performing a
secondary task (i.e., monitoring the number of dots that
appeared on a computer screen by finger tapping), they
produced fewer category members, took longer to produce
a first response and, most importantly in the present
context, their subsequent responses were delayed such
that a greater proportion were produced towards the end
of the trial, when compared with single-task settings. As a
measure of the relative distribution of responses across
the fluency trial in single- versus dual-task situations,
Rohrer et al. (1995) introduced a measure that they called
“mean response latency”, which is the average time to
produce each response with each time calculated from
the beginning of the trial. The effect of dual tasking
on mean retrieval latency is most easily understood by
considering a hypothetical case in which the same number
of correct responses is produced in both single- and dual-
task settings. For example, assume speakers correctly
retrieve in both single- and dual-task settings all four
exemplars of a category with just four exemplars (e.g.,
primary directions on a compass). In the single task these
might be retrieved at 2, 4, 6 and 8 seconds, resulting in
a mean retrieval latency of (4 + 6 + 8) / 3 (i.e., 6.0)
(first response latencies are excluded because they may
reflect different processes related to initiating production,
though this exclusion does not have a very big effect on
mean retrieval latencies; Rohrer et al., 1995). During the
dual task, each response is delayed because of the need to
carry out the secondary task, and so responses might be
retrieved at 3, 6, 9 and 12 seconds for a mean time of (6 +
9 + 12) / 3 (i.e., 9.0).
Importantly, when measured this way (with each
exemplar time counted from the beginning of the trial),
mean retrieval latency is not a simple measure of response
speed; generalized slowing does not necessarily lead
to longer mean response latencies. To avoid confusion
between Rohrer et al.’s mean response latency measure
and simple measures of response speed, we refer to
mean response latency as the “fulcrum point’, which
illustrates that the measure reflects the balance of
responses in terms of when they occur across the fluency
trial. As an example, monolinguals with Alzheimer’s
disease named pictures much more slowly than age-
matched controls (between 14% and 22% more slowly
in Thompson-Schill, Gabrieli and Fleischman, 1999;
Bilingual verbal fluency 235
see also Vandenberghe, Vandenbulcke and Weintraub,
2005), but produced significantly SHORTER fulcrum points
than age-matched controls in the fluency task (Rohrer
et al., 1995; Rohrer, Salmon, Wixted and Paulsen, 1999).
This point illustrates how straightforward comparisons
of reaction times and fulcrum points are misleading.
What is critical for influencing the fulcrum point is the
relative distribution of responses during the trial; longer
fulcrum points indicate a greater proportion of the total
responses produced toward the end of the trial. Patients
with Alzheimer’s disease have shorter (but not faster)
mean retrieval latencies in category fluency because they
produce exemplars at the beginning of the trial but then
exhaust their pool of retrievable responses more quickly.
In contrast, age-matched controls continue retrieving
exemplars well into the minute-long trial, consequently
yielding longer mean retrieval latencies.
Figure 1a displays the expected differences between
bilinguals and monolinguals in predicted the mean
fulcrum point if the bilingual fluency disadvantage arises
because of interference between languages that effectively
places bilinguals under dual-task demands. Here, we
assume that the bilingual to monolingual comparison
should resemble the dual- to single-task comparison
reported in prior studies. As such, bilinguals should
produce fewer correct responses, delayed first response
times, and a later fulcrum point than monolinguals. The
pronounced delay in fulcrum point is expected because
some of the time, and particularly early on in the fluency
trial (where between-language interference should be
greatest), bilinguals will retrieve names in the non-target
language, and will need to suppress the production of
these words before retrieving additional target language
exemplars.
The prediction of the weaker links hypothesis with
respect to fulcrum points depends on an additional
assumption: Can speakers search a semantic category
for exemplars at the same time as they produce the
name of an already identified category member? If search
and production cannot proceed in parallel, then retrieval
slowing will be cumulative across the fluency trial, such
that with each consecutive exemplar produced, bilinguals’
fulcrum points will be increasingly delayed relative to
those of monolinguals. For example, in picture-naming
studies, the extent of slowing related to bilingualism for
producing each picture name was 80–150 ms (Gollan,
Montoya et al., 2005; Gollan et al., 2008). As such, a
category that leads speakers to retrieve approximately 10
exemplars should yield a delay in fulcrum point on the
order of about 0.8 to 1.5 seconds (e.g., 10 × 150 ms =
1,500 ms), and the weaker links account would predict
a small delay in fulcrum point for bilinguals relative to
monolinguals.
Alternatively, if category search can proceed in parallel
with production of a selected exemplar (for review, see
236 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon

Figure 1. Idealized response latencies representing (1a) retrieval slowing and (1b) the reduced vocabulary hypothesis in a
single trial of verbal fluency. Bilingual data are represented by circles and monolinguals’ data are represented by the
diamonds. The solid rectangles on the x-axis indicate the fulcrum points for bilinguals and monolinguals in each hypothetical
case. The panel entitled “Retrieval Slowing” illustrates the predictions of the interference account (1a): bilinguals’ responses
are shifted to the right, particularly at the beginning of the trial where between-language interference is greatest. The panel
entitled “Vocabulary Size” illustrates the reduced vocabulary hypothesis (1b): bilinguals have shorter fulcrum points because
they exhaust their pool of retrievable responses prior to monolinguals.

Rohrer, Pashler and Etchegaray, 1998), then there should
be virtually no change in fulcrum points associated with
bilingualism, according to the weaker links account. This
is because differences of 80–150 ms are negligible when
considered with respect to fulcrum points on the order
of 25–30 seconds within a minute-long verbal fluency
trial, and in a parallel model, the delay associated with
bilingualism would not be cumulative across exemplars
because bilinguals could search for subsequent exemplars
while producing each exemplar. Note that the fulcrum
point is an average, therefore, if each bilingual response is
slowed by (for example) 150 ms, but category search can
proceed at the same time as production, then the fulcrum
point will only be right-shifted by 150 ms, according to
the weaker links account.
To outline the predictions of the vocabulary size
account, we draw a second analogy between category size
effects on monolingual fluency and the bilingual effect.
Smaller category size introduced the opposite effect
on fulcrum point relative to dual-task effects (Rohrer
et al., 1995). Whereas dual-task conditions delayed the
fulcrum point, when speakers retrieved exemplars from
smaller categories they had earlier fulcrum points than
when retrieving exemplars from larger categories (Rohrer
et al., 1995). This difference was obtained because,
when producing exemplars from smaller categories,
speakers produced a greater proportion of exemplars
at the beginning of the trial, and then approached
asymptote more quickly than when retrieving from
larger categories. Thus, when speakers can retrieve a
smaller number of exemplars, whether because of smaller
category size or because of reduction in knowledge as
a consequence of Alzheimer’s disease, speakers exhaust
their knowledge of exemplars by the end of the trial
and fulcrum points are shortened (or pushed to the left).
Figure 1b illustrates the expected difference between
bilinguals and monolinguals in mean fulcrum point if
the bilingual fluency disadvantage stems from reduced
 Bilingual verbal fluency 237

Table 1. Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) of participant characteristics in Experiment 1.

Experiment 1 Experiment 2
English- English-
dominant Experiment 1 dominant
bilinguals monolinguals bilinguals
(n = 24) (n = 30) (n = 45)

M SD M SD M SD F-ratiob p value ηp 2 df c

Age 20.33 2.94 19.67 1.32 21.16 4.19 1.23 .27 .02 1,52
Education 14.22 2.65 14.28 1.66 14.37 1.46 <1 .92 <.01 1,50
Age of first exposure to English 2.09 2.09 0.21 0.49 2.70 2.27 22.09 <.01 .30 1,51
Age of exposure to other language 0.46 0.90 10.80 5.73 0.30 0.76 76.25 <.01 .61 1,49
% English used daily 87.33 12.81 99.53 1.31 90.02 9.36 27.00 <.01 .34 1,52
Self-ratinga for spoken English 6.88 0.45 6.93 0.26 6.68 0.79 0.32 .57 .01 1,51
Self-ratinga for spoken other 5.92 1.25 2.74 1.29 5.89 1.11 79.47 <.01 .62 1,49
language

a
Proficiency level based on self-ratings using a scale of 1–7 with 1 being “little to no knowledge” and 7 being “like a native speaker”.
b
The statistics represent the comparison between English-dominant bilinguals and monolinguals from Experiment 1.
c
The degrees of freedom differ from 1,52 in cases where some participants left part of their language history questionnaire blank.

language-specific vocabulary relative to monolinguals. To letter fluency tasks. We focused on English-dominant

illustrate, if bilinguals can only generate four exemplars
in a certain category, these might be retrieved at 4, 9, 12
and 21 seconds, resulting in a fulcrum point of (9 + 12
+ 21) / 3 (i.e., 14.0) seconds. Monolinguals producing
words at the same rate, but who generate more than four
words, for example at 4, 9, 12, 21, 28 and 35 seconds,
would have later fulcrum points (9 + 12 + 21 + 28 + 35)
/ 5 (i.e., 21.0) seconds.
To summarize, the bilingual fluency disadvantage can
be explained by between-language interference, weaker
links or reduced vocabulary, but the reduced vocabulary
hypothesis predicts a reduction in the fulcrum point,
the weaker links predicts either no difference or a
delay in fulcrum point, and interference predicts a
delay in the fulcrum point. Additionally, the weaker
links and reduced vocabulary accounts predict that
bilinguals should produce higher-frequency words on
average relative to monolinguals, whereas the interference
account predicts that bilinguals should produce lower-
frequency words on average relative to monolinguals.
Experiment 1
In Experiment 1, we tested the different predictions of the
interference (dual-task analogy), weaker links (slowing
without interference) and reduced vocabulary knowledge
(category size analogy) accounts of the bilingual fluency
disadvantage relative to monolinguals. To this end we
compared English-speaking monolinguals to English-
dominant Spanish–English bilinguals on semantic and
bilinguals because it is important to establish the
mechanism of the bilingual disadvantage when bilinguals
are tested in a language that allows them to be as fluent as
possible.
Method
Participants
Thirty monolinguals and thirty bilinguals participated in
the study for course credit. All participants completed a
comprehensive language history questionnaire to assess
their exposure to, and proficiency in, various languages.
Monolinguals were native English speakers with no or
limited (and non-native) proficiency in a second language.
Although some monolinguals reported learning a second
language, it was mainly via classroom instruction and
none reported having been exposed at a young age
or becoming fluent in that language. The majority of
bilinguals reported being English-dominant, or having
approximately equal proficiency in English and Spanish
(twenty-four out of thirty subjects). Six bilinguals
reported being Spanish-dominant and were excluded from
our analyses.
Table 1 shows the participants’ characteristics.
Monolinguals and bilinguals did not significantly differ
in average age or level of education. However, bilinguals
reported a significantly later age at which they began to
use English regularly. In addition, monolinguals reported
a higher percentage of daily English use than bilinguals,
and bilinguals rated their proficiency for speaking English
238 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon
Table 2. Different counterbalancing orders used in Experiment 1.
Order 1 sema large letters 1
Order 2 sem med letters 2
Order 3 sem small letters 3
Order 4 letters 1 sem large
Order 5 letters 2 sem med
Order 6 letters 3 sem small
a
Sem is an abbreviation for semantic.
as being significantly lower than monolinguals’ ratings.
We replaced two monolinguals who reported exposure to
a non-English language at birth and another because of
lost data, and we replaced two bilinguals because of lost
data.
Materials
The materials are listed in Appendix A. We selected
categories to include a range of difficulty in terms of both
size and frequency of exemplars. We included 15 semantic
categories (e.g., “types of clothing”) and 24 double-letter
(e.g., “fa”) categories. Within semantic categories we
achieved variability in size and frequency of exemplars
by making smaller subsets of larger categories (e.g.,
“supermarket items”, “produce items” and “spices”).
Within double-letter categories we used a previous data set
(Gollan et al., 2002) in which speakers retrieved members
of single letter categories (e.g. “f”) to estimate category
size and exemplar frequency. We divided the materials
into three lists of semantic categories (with five items in
each; blocked by size), and three lists of double-letter
categories (with eight items each; mixed in terms of
size and frequency). We used an additional two semantic
and two double-letter categories as practice trials at the
beginning of the testing session.
Procedure
Participants were tested individually. The experimenter
recorded responses both manually and by audiotape for
later verification during scoring. Participants alternated
back and forth between blocks of double-letter and
semantic fluency trials, with semantic categories blocked
by difficulty so that no single category would benefit
exclusively from practice on related blocks (e.g.,
“supermarket items” should be easier after completing
“produce”). Within each list, specific items were presented
in a random order. The presentation order of blocks
was counterbalanced so that no category type was
always administered first or last: half of the participants
completed a semantic list first, and half completed a
letter list first. The type of list (letter vs. semantic)
was then alternated throughout the experiment, so that
sem med letters 2 sem small letters 3
sem small letters 3 sem large letters 1
sem large letters 1 sem med letters 2
letters 2 sem med letters 3 sem small
letters 3 sem small letters 1 sem large
letters 1 sem large letters 2 sem med
upon completing all the categories within a letter group,
participants would then be asked to switch to a semantic
group and vice versa. Table 2 depicts the counterbalancing
scheme in greater detail.
Participants were instructed to name as many
examples of things they could think of that belonged to
each category without stopping, until the experimenter
indicated they should do so. Each trial lasted 60 seconds.
During double-letter categories, participants were asked
to not use the same word with a different ending (e.g.,
feel and feeling). Even though it was not explicitly stated,
all bilinguals correctly assumed that responses should be
given in English (and not in Spanish). Before beginning
the experimental trials, the experimenter guided each
participant through four practice trials (i.e., two semantic
and two double-letter categories). In the practice trial
and throughout the experimental trials, participants were
instructed to push a button on a response box at the
same time as they began to say each category member.
Response times were recorded through the button box
using PsyScope 1.2.5. (Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt and
Provost, 1993). On each individual trial, the experimenter
was cued by PsyScope as to which category was to be
administered next, and she then told the participant the
category name with the instruction “Begin”.
Results
Each correct response was given one point. During
the initial scoring, a list of acceptable responses was
constructed to ensure consistency across participants. In
semantic categories, one point was given for exemplars
belonging to a superordinate category, but this response
was not credited if other subcategory exemplars were
given. For example, if a subject said fruit and then apple,
pear and banana, she would be credited for producing
three correct responses. For each category, we calculated
the fulcrum point by taking the average of the times for
each correct response from the beginning of the trial
(excluding first responses, as in Rohrer et al., 1995). In
addition, we obtained the mean CELEX word frequency
(Baayen, Piepenbrock and Gulikers, 1995) of exemplars
produced using a program called N-watch (Davis, 2005).

Figure 2. Mean CELEX (Baayen et al., 1995) frequency of
exemplars produced by English-dominant bilinguals in
English and monolinguals in semantic categories (top panel)
and double-letter categories (bottom panel) in Experiment 1.
Lines represent the best-fitting logarithmic for each group.
We conducted five 2 × 2 mixed model ANOVAs using
participant means with participant type (bilingual vs.
monolingual) as a between-subjects variable and category
type (semantic versus letter) as a within-subjects variable
for each of five dependent variables including: (a) number
correct; (b) word frequency count of exemplars produced;
(c) rate of cognates produced; (d) first response times; (e)
fulcrum points (subsequent retrieval times); and (f) errors.
The participant means for word frequency count in each
5-second time bin from the beginning to the end of the
fluency trial are shown in Figure 2; means from all other
analyses (averaging across specific categories tested) are
shown in Table 3. Although tables show times in seconds,
the MSE values in the results sections are reported in
milliseconds.
Correct responses. Bilinguals produced significantly
fewer correct responses than monolinguals (replicating
Bilingual verbal fluency 239
prior work, e.g., Gollan et al. 2002; Rosselli et al., 2000)
[F(1,52) = 4.79, MSE = 5.60, η2 p = .08, p = .03].
Also replicating prior work (but see Azuma, Bayles, Cruz,
Tomoeda, Wood and McGeagh, 1997), speakers produced
significantly more correct responses in semantic than in
the double-letter categories [F(1,52) = 331.13, MSE =
3.46, η2 p = .86, p < .01]. Bilinguals were equally
disadvantaged for semantic and letter categories (but see
below), as suggested by the lack of a significant interaction
between participant and category type (F < 1).
Word frequency of responses. In the frequency analysis,
consistent with the interference account, monolinguals
produced words with higher frequency counts than
bilinguals [F(1,52) = 8.43, MSE = 27,829.61, η2 p =
.14, p = .01]. In semantic categories, bilinguals’
exemplars averaged 512.0 occurrences per million, and
monolinguals 690.6 occurrences per million, and in
letter categories bilinguals’ exemplars averaged 96.2
occurrences per million and monolinguals were slightly
higher at 105.1 occurrences per million. The frequency
differences between category types were significant, such
that participants produced higher-frequency words in
semantic than in double-letter categories [F(1,52) =
234.25, MSE = 28,530.05, η2 p = .82, p < .01] and,
consistent with previous findings of a greater bilingual
effect on semantic than on letter fluency (e.g., Bialystok
et al., 2008b; Gollan et al., 2002; Rosselli et al.,
2000), there was also an interaction [F(1,52) = 6.73,
MSE = 28,530.05, η2 p = .12, p = .01], such that
the frequency difference between groups was primarily
produced by semantic categories. Post-hoc comparisons
revealed a significant difference between bilinguals and
monolinguals for semantic [F(1,52) = 7.66, MSE =
5,567.10, η2 p = .13, p = .01] but not for letter categories
[F(1,52) = 1.33, MSE = 792.57, η2 p = .03, p = .25].
To moderate the influence of extreme values, we
repeated the frequency analyses with log-frequency as
the dependent variable (and excluding all exemplars
with a frequency of zero). This analysis produced the
same pattern of results (a significant difference between
bilinguals and monolinguals for semantic but not letter
categories). There was some indication of a reversal of
the bilingual effect on frequency of exemplars towards
the end of the letter trials (with bilinguals producing
significantly lower-frequency words than monolinguals
early in the trial, and higher-frequency words later
in the trial; see Figure 2). An exploratory series of
twelve t-tests comparing exemplar frequency count in
bilinguals versus monolinguals in each 5-second bin
confirmed these differences, with bilinguals producing
lowe- frequency exemplars than monolinguals at 25
seconds and 45 seconds, but higher-frequency exemplars
than monolinguals at 55 seconds (all ps = .03 level).
However, this reversal of frequency effect (in the 55-
second bin) was not significant after adjusting alpha level
240 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon

Table 3. Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) of response measures in Experiment 1.

Semantic categories

Number Number First retrieval Subsequent

correct errors latency retrieval latency

M SD M SD M SD M SD

Monolinguals 13.8 2.9 0.6 0.6 2.0 1.0 24.6 1.4

English-dominant bilinguals 12.5 2.7 0.4 0.2 3.2 1.6 25.6 2.3
Double-letter categories

Number Number First retrieval Subsequent

correct errors latency retrieval latency

M SD M SD M SD M SD

Monolinguals 7.0 1.0 0.6 0.4 2.4 1.1 23.7 1.2

English-dominant bilinguals 6.3 1.1 0.8 0.4 2.8 1.5 24.8 1.7

for multiple comparisons (Winer, Brown and Michels,
1991), and was also not significant after conversion to log-
frequency, and as such we do not interpret these results
any further.
Rate of cognates produced. To consider the possible
effects of cognate status on responses, we classified all
responses produced as either cognates or non-cognates.
Initial coding was done by the first author (TCS), checked
by the second author (THG) and rating disagreements
(less than 3% of responses) were settled by a third
bilingual assistant who was blind to the first and second
authors’ classifications. Responses with one cognate
and one non-cognate translation (e.g., doctor can be
translated as médico or as doctor) were coded as cognates.
For each participant, we then calculated the proportion
of responses in letter and semantic categories that were
cognates, and considered whether bilinguals produced
more cognates than monolinguals in a 2 × 2 ANOVA
with category type (letter vs. semantic) and participant
type (bilingual vs. monolingual) as predictors and rate of
cognate production as the dependent variable.
In letter fluency, bilinguals produced cognates 38%
(SD = 7%) and monolinguals 34% (SD = 5%) of
the time, and in semantic fluency, bilinguals produced
cognates 34% (SD = 2%) and monolinguals 32% (SD =
6%) of the time. This higher rate of cognate production
in bilinguals than in monolinguals was significant
[F(1,52) = 8.03, MSE = .003, η2 p = .13, p = .01], and
cognate production was higher in letter than in semantic
fluency [F(1,52) = 10.11, MSE = .002, η2 p = .16, p <
.01]. Though differences between bilinguals and monolin-
guals in the rate of cognates produced seemed to be larger
for letter than for semantic categories, this interaction was
not significant [F(1,52) = 1.70, MSE = .002, η2 p = .03,
p = .20]. Planned contrasts revealed that bilinguals
produced a significantly higher rate of cognates than
monolinguals in both letter and semantic fluency (both
ps < .05).
Word-frequency and cognate status. Having observed
that bilinguals produce a higher proportion of cognate
responses than monolinguals, we next considered whether
the above-reported finding that bilinguals produce lower-
frequency words than monolinguals in semantic fluency
categories is still significant after including only non-
cognate responses. Table 4 shows the mean CELEX
frequency count of cognate and non-cognate responses.
Cognate responses were significantly lower in mean
frequency count than non-cognates in both letter and
semantic fluency categories for both bilinguals and
monolinguals (all ps < .01). Most importantly, the above-
reported difference between bilinguals and monolinguals
in response word frequency for semantic categories
remained significant when considering only the non-
cognate responses [F(1,52) = 5.10, MSE = 112.005,
η2 p = .09, p = .03]. Thus bilinguals’ higher rate of cognate
production alone could not explain their production of
significantly lower-frequency responses than those of
monolinguals.
First response latencies. In the analysis of first
response latencies, bilinguals were significantly slower
than monolinguals to begin producing exemplars at the
beginning of each trial [F(1,52) = 8.63, MSE = 2205.73,
η2 p = .14, p = .01], whereas first response latencies were
equivalent across semantic and double-letter categories
[F(1,52) < 1, MSE = 1171.12, η2 p = .00, p = .947]. There
was some evidence for a greater bilingualism-related
slowing on semantic than on letter categories in the form
of a marginally significant interaction between participant
type and category type [F(1,52) = 3.47, η2 p = .063, p =
.07]. Planned comparisons showed that bilinguals were

Table 4. Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) of
CELEX frequency count per million for cognate and
non-cognate responses given by bilinguals and
monolinguals in Experiment 1.
Semantic categories Letter categories
Non- Non-
Cognate cognate Cognate cognate
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Monolinguals 233 190 950 258 39 11 140 37
English-dominant 156 208 698 411 38 12 132 50
bilinguals
slower than monolinguals to begin producing exemplars
in semantic [F(1,52) = 12.21, MSE = 1665.99 η2 p = .19,
p < .01] but not in letter [F(1,52) = 1.61, MSE = 1710.87
η2 p = .03, p = .21] categories.
Fulcrum points. Most interestingly, and consistent
with the notion of retrieval slowing in bilinguals (either
via between-language interference or weaker links; see
Table 3), bilinguals had significantly right-shifted (longer)
fulcrum points than monolinguals in retrieving exemplars
from semantic [F(1,52) = 9.29, MSE = 3244.39, η2 p =
.15, p < .01] and from letter categories [F(1,52) = 9.41,
MSE = 2117.17, η2 p = .15, p < .01]. In addition, the
magnitude of the bilingual effect on fulcrum points was
equally large on letter and semantic fluency (there was
no significant interaction between participant type and
category type; F < 1).
Errors. The errors analysis revealed no bilingual
disadvantage, and no main effect of category type, (both
Fs < 1), and a significant interaction such that bilinguals
made significantly more errors in the letter categories
(M = 0.85) than in semantic categories (M = 0.41),
whereas monolinguals made similar numbers of errors
in both categories [F(1,52) = 17.70, η2 p = .25, p <
.01]. This interaction was unexpected (particularly given
prior evidence that letter fluency is relatively easier for
bilinguals than semantic fluency; e.g., Gollan et al., 2002),
however, it should be noted that the number of errors
committed by both groups was very low (i.e., less than
one error per trial).
To consider how robust the bilingual effect on
number correct and fulcrum points were for individual
categories, we examined how many individual categories
demonstrated an effect in the direction consistent with
the group analysis. Bilinguals showed fewer correct
responses in 22/24 letter categories, and in 11/15 semantic
categories. Bilinguals showed slower first response
latencies in 20/24 letter and 13/15 semantic categories.
Finally, bilinguals demonstrated longer fulcrum points in
12/15 semantic and 21/24 letter categories.
Bilingual verbal fluency 241
Discussion
The results of Experiment 1 support the dual-task
analogy of the bilingual fluency disadvantage. As with
performance under dual-task settings (Rohrer et al., 1995),
bilinguals produced fewer correct responses, slower first
response times, and right-shifted fulcrum points (see
Table 3). The finding of right-shifted fulcrum points
for bilinguals relative to monolinguals provides evidence
against the reduced vocabulary knowledge hypothesis. If
reduced vocabulary knowledge alone were responsible
for the bilingual fluency disadvantage, then bilinguals
should have exhibited shorter fulcrum points, because
bilinguals would exhaust their vocabulary knowledge
more quickly than monolinguals at the end of the fluency
trial. Right-shifted fulcrum points can be explained by
both interference and the weaker links account (if it is also
assumed that category search and exemplar production
cannot proceed in parallel).
However, other aspects of the data in Experiment 1
are not consistent with the weaker links and reduced
vocabulary accounts, and are in line with the predictions of
the interference account. Specifically, bilinguals produced
significantly lower-frequency words on average than
monolinguals (see Figure 2; note that the opposite
pattern has been found in fluency deficits associated
with Alzheimer’s disease; patients produce higher-
frequency words than matched controls; Forbes-McKay,
Ellis, Shanks and Venneri, 2005). Importantly, although
bilinguals produced cognates at a significantly higher
rate than monolinguals, and cognates were significantly
lower in mean frequency count than non-cognates, the
bilinguals’ production of lower-frequency words on
average relative to monolinguals was significant even
when considering just non-cognate responses. This result
supports the interference account, which predicts greater
interference between languages for production of high-
frequency words which are more readily accessible in
both languages when compared to low-frequency words
(for which bilinguals may be effectively monolingual;
Gollan et al., 2008). In contrast, the weaker links and
reduced vocabulary accounts predicted that bilinguals
should be disadvantaged primarily for the production
of low-frequency words, and as such should have
produced higher-frequency words on average relative
to monolinguals. Thus, the pattern of data observed
in Experiment 1 is most consistent with the notion of
interference between languages as the primary mechanism
of the bilingual fluency disadvantage.
To further examine the bilingual disadvantage in
semantic versus letter fluency, we plotted the time-course
of retrieval in each group in Figure 3, showing time
(in seconds) on the x-axis and mean number correct
produced by bilinguals and monolinguals by each 5-
second time point on the y-axis. This figure thereby
combines number correct and time-course into a single
242 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon
Figure 3. Mean number of responses per category retrieved
by English-dominant bilinguals in English and
monolinguals in semantic categories (top panel) and
double-letter categories (bottom panel) in Experiment 1.
Lines represent the best-fitting exponentials for each group.
graph and allows for visual inspection of qualitative
differences between groups. The most immediately
apparent difference between bilinguals and monolinguals
is that the bilingual disadvantage emerges early in the
minute-long trial. Bilinguals produce fewer exemplars
than monolinguals at the beginning of the trial, but by the
end of the trial the differences diminish. More specifically,
as Figure 3 shows, bilinguals produce fewer exemplars
than monolinguals early in the trial (up to about 20 seconds
in semantic categories, and up to about 10 seconds in letter
categories). The emergence of a fluency disadvantage
at the beginning of the fluency trial provides further
evidence against the reduced vocabulary mechanism,
which predicted that differences between groups should
emerge only at the end of the trial. Additionally, assuming
that speakers primarily produce high-frequency words
at the beginning of the trial (Crowe, 1998; see also
Figure 2), the presence of a bilingual disadvantage early
in the fluency trial is evidence in favor of the notion
that competition between languages primarily affects
production of high-frequency words.
Although we obtained significant clear evidence in
favor of the dual-task analogy for explaining the bilingual
fluency disadvantage, these differences were relatively
small when compared with the effects of dual tasking
(Rohrer et al., 1995). The exponentially fitted lines
for bilinguals display a clear bilingual disadvantage
(in Figure 3), but the disadvantage is much smaller
than that observed comparing monolinguals in dual-task
versus single-task conditions (in Rohrer et al., 1995). In
Experiment 2, we sought corroborating evidence for the
hypothesis that between-language interference influences
bilingual fluency performance by comparing the time-
course of retrieval, and the rate of cross-language intrusion
errors, in the dominant versus the non-dominant language.
Experiment 2
Our interpretation of the bilingual disadvantage in
Experiment 1 as reflecting interference between languages
relies on the notion that the non-dominant language
can compete for selection with the dominant language
(because English-dominant bilinguals were tested
exclusively in English in Experiment 1). However, a
number of studies suggest that the dominant language is
relatively immune to interference from, or transfer to, the
non-dominant language, and that the pattern of observed
bilingual disadvantages for dominant language production
cannot be explained with an interference mechanism. As
noted above, in some cases bilinguals show evidence
of non-dominant language activation only immediately
after being tested in a non-dominant-language-only block
(Jared and Kroll, 2001). Similarly, masked priming
between languages is obtained only when primes are in
the dominant language, whereas non-dominant language
primes seem to have no effects, or more limited effects, on
lexical decision times in the dominant language (Gollan,
Forster, and Frost, 1997, Jiang and Forster, 2001; but
see Duyck, 2005; for review, see Finkbeiner, Forster,
Nicol and Nakamura, 2004). Finally, explicit (e.g., Costa
and Caramazza, 1999) and implicit (e.g., Gollan and
Acenas, 2004; Gollan, Montoya et al., 2005) activation
of translation equivalents seems to facilitate, not interfere
with, target language selection in picture naming.
In contrast, there is considerably greater consensus
among researchers of bilingualism that the dominant
language interferes with production in the non-dominant
language (for exceptions, see Costa, 2005; La Heij,
2005), and all models that accept the notion of
interference between languages propose an asymmetry
such that interference is greater in non-dominant language
production than it is for the dominant language (Green,
1998; for reviews, see Kroll et al., 2006, 2008). The
strongest evidence in support of this asymmetry comes

from the observation of counter-intuitive asymmetry in
language switching costs (e.g., Meuter and Allport, 1999),
such that switching costs are greater for the dominant
language than for the non-dominant language (even
though responses in the dominant language are generally
faster). A ready explanation for the asymmetry is the
notion that the dominant language must be strongly
inhibited to allow non-dominant language production, and
undoing this inhibition (to switch back into the dominant
language) is costly. In contrast, the dominant language is
relatively immune to interference from the non-dominant
language and so there is no (or very little) need to inhibit
the non-dominant language to produce the dominant one.
If the bilingual fluency disadvantage should be
attributed to between-language interference, and if such
interference is particularly strong for non-dominant
language production, then the predictions outlined above
(in Experiment 1) for the bilingual to monolingual contrast
should apply when comparing non-dominant to dominant
language production within bilinguals. That is, when
attempting to produce exemplars in their non-dominant
language, bilinguals should unintentionally retrieve and
then need to reject non-target language words relatively
more often than they did during dominant language
fluency, thereby increasing the extent to which the dual
task is performed.
Note that the comparison of the dominant to the non-
dominant language simultaneously provides a stronger
opportunity for examining the possible roles of weaker
links (slowing without interference) and vocabulary
size on fluency performance because both differences
should be relatively greater in the language dominance
contrast than in the contrast between bilinguals and
monolinguals. We anticipated, for example, that language
dominance effects on number correct in Experiment 2
(i.e., the difference in number correct between English
and Spanish) would be larger than the subtle bilingual
effect on number correct we obtained in Experiment 1
(see Table 3). This expectation was based on prior work,
in which we observed the bilingual disadvantage relative
to monolinguals to be considerably smaller than the
effect of language dominance in picture-naming times
and error rates (Gollan et al., 2008) within bilinguals.
In anecdotal observations as well, the disadvantage of
English-dominant bilinguals relative to monolinguals in
natural production of English is barely, if at all, detectable.
In contrast, English-dominant bilinguals are obviously
less fluent in at least some contexts when they speak in
Spanish than in English.
Additionally, because bilinguals likely have smaller
vocabularies in their non-dominant than in their dominant
language, when retrieving category members in the non-
dominant language bilinguals should exhaust their pool
of accessible words relatively early in the minute-long
trial. As such, language dominance effects on retrieval
Bilingual verbal fluency 243
time-course should resemble category size effects (Rohrer
et al., 1995). On this view, we would predict leftward-
shifted (shorter) fulcrum points in Spanish compared to
English (analogous to retrieval from smaller categories in
monolinguals). To illustrate, in Experiment 1 bilinguals
continued to retrieve exemplars well into the minute-
long fluency trial, thereby providing relatively more long
response times and slowing their overall mean response
time. In contrast, when asked to retrieve exemplars
from the non-dominant language, bilinguals may retrieve
relatively high-frequency exemplars early on, but then as
the trial progresses may not know (or may be unable
to retrieve) the Spanish names for relatively lower-
frequency exemplars (see Gollan et al. (2008) for evidence
that language dominance effects are especially robust
for the production of low-frequency names), leading to
shorter fulcrum points in the non-dominant language.
Thus, if language non-dominance instead leads to right-
shifted fulcrum points, this would constitute especially
strong evidence for the notion that between-language
interference influences fluency performance in bilinguals
relatively more than any other mechanism.
To test these proposals, in Experiment 2 we examined
the time-course of retrieval during verbal fluency in
the dominant versus in the non-dominant language.
We hypothesized that bilinguals would produce fewer
correct responses, slower first response times, and
right-shifted (longer) fulcrum points in their non-
dominant language (in this case, Spanish) than in their
dominant language (English). A confirmation of these
predictions, particularly longer fulcrum points in the non-
dominant than in the dominant language, would provide
additional support for the hypothesis that between-
language interference influences fluency performance in
bilinguals.
Methods
Participants
Fifty-one Spanish–English bilinguals participated in the
study for course credit. Participants completed the same
language history questionnaire used in Experiment 1.
As in Experiment 1, the majority of bilinguals reported
being English dominant, or having approximately equal
proficiency in English and Spanish (forty-five out of
fifty-one subjects). Six bilinguals reported being Spanish
dominant and so were eliminated from the analyses.
Table 1 shows the participants’ characteristics.
Materials
We selected twelve semantic categories (e.g., “kitchen
appliances”) for Experiment 2. The materials are listed
in Appendix B. As part of a separate investigation,
participants also retrieved members of six proper name
categories (e.g., “UCSD Professors’ names”), but we
244 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon

do not discuss these here because proper names are Table 5. Means (M) and standard deviations (SD) of
generally the same across languages, leaving it unclear response measures in Experiment 2.
what predictions should be made for them regarding
language dominance effects. Semantic categories

First Subsequent
Procedure Number Number retrieval retrieval
Bilinguals were tested individually and responses were
correct errors latency latency
recorded both manually by the experimenter and
on audiotape for later verification during scoring. M SD M SD M SD M SD
Instructions were to name as many members of each
category as they could in the target language (English English 8.6 2.0 0.6 0.6 2.2 0.6 20.0 2.6
or Spanish) until the experimenter told them to stop. Spanish 5.6 2.0 0.6 0.5 3.4 1.5 21.7 3.3
Each trial lasted 60 seconds. For Spanish testing
blocks, bilinguals were given instructions in Spanish
by a native Spanish–English bilingual experimenter. In
English testing blocks, instructions were given in English.
Bilinguals tested in English first were not specifically
instructed to do the task in English, but all participants
assumed that they should. Before the experiment began,
participants were guided through a practice trial, similar
to Experiment 1, where they learned to press a button
on a PsyScope response box at the same time as
they said their answers to measure retrieval times. All
bilinguals completed half of the categories of each type
in each language, with language order (i.e., Spanish first
or English first) counterbalanced between participants.
Within each language block, each bilingual completed
categories in a different random order.
Figure 4. Mean number of responses per category retrieved
Results by bilinguals in Spanish (the non-dominant language)
One point was given for each correct response. Correct versus in English (the dominant language) in Experiment 2.
responses given in the wrong target language were Lines represent the best-fitting exponentials for each group.
counted as errors, which we coded separately for the
errors analysis. During scoring, a list of acceptable however, we consider the rate of between-language errors
responses was constructed to ensure consistency in coding separately as an additional form of evidence that can
across bilinguals. For each trial, we calculated fulcrum distinguish between interference and weaker links in
points as in Experiment 1. Experiment 2.
We conducted four one-way ANOVAs using participant Correct responses, first-response latencies and fulcrum
means with language (English vs. Spanish) as a within- points. Consistent with their reported English dominance,
subjects variable for the following dependent variables: bilinguals produced significantly fewer correct responses
(a) number correct; (b) first response times; (c) fulcrum in Spanish than in English [F(1,44) = 70.93, MSE =
points (subsequent retrieval times); (d) rate of cognates 3.00, η2 p = .62, p < .01], and bilinguals were significantly
produced; and (e) within-language errors. The means slower to begin producing exemplars in Spanish compared
for these analyses (averaging across specific categories to English [F(1,44) = 33.72, MSE = 930,166.99, η2 p =
tested) are shown in Table 5, and the time-course of .43, p < .01]. Most interestingly, bilinguals’ fulcrum
retrieval in terms of number correct in each 5-second bin is points were significantly longer in Spanish than in English
shown in Figure 4. Because comparisons across different [F(1,44) = 12.36, MSE = 5,130,866.99, η2 p = .22, p <
frequency corpora are not valid, we do not compare word
frequency of responses produced in English and Spanish;2
to monolingual contrast in Experiment 1. That is, bilinguals produced
significantly lower-frequency words on average in their less-dominant
2 An exploratory analysis comparing per million frequency of English Spanish than in their dominant English (at the p < .01 level). However,
responses obtained from CELEX (Baayen et al., 1995) to Spanish this difference was no longer significant after converting frequency
responses obtained from the LEXESP database (Sebastián-Gallés, values to log-frequency and eliminating all responses that were not
Martı́, Cuetos and Carreiras, 2000) using Buscapalabras (Davis & listed in the frequency databases (instead of entering those responses
Perea, 2005) showed results similar to those obtained for the bilingual as having a count of zero per million; F < 1).

.01]. Thus the analyses of fulcrum points confirmed the
proposal that between-language interference is greater
during production of the non-dominant than of the
dominant language, suggesting that for English-dominant
bilinguals, production in Spanish presents more of a dual-
task situation than production in English.
Rate of cognates produced. Bilinguals produced
cognates at about the same rate (p = .28) in Spanish
(M = 36%; SD = 8%) and English (M = 34%; SD =
6%). The lack of a difference between languages in the
two languages may simply reflect an upper limit on the
amount of cognates available for response.
Errors. A compelling aspect of the error data was that
twenty of forty-five bilinguals tested in Experiment 2
accidentally produced at least one English word during
Spanish fluency trials. In contrast, during English fluency
trials only one bilingual accidentally produced a Spanish
word. This asymmetrical pattern of between-language
intrusion errors is consistent with the notion that between-
language interference is particularly large when bilinguals
do the fluency task in their non-dominant language. Aside
from this exception, error rates were otherwise relatively
low overall, and there were no effects of language
dominance; bilinguals produced the same number of
errors in English and Spanish (F < 1).
Order effects. Our procedure of counterbalancing the
order of language testing provides an opportunity to
examine the influence of testing order on dual-language
activation. Of particular interest was to determine if
activating the non-dominant language on a prior testing
block increased the extent to which it could interfere with
dominant language production on a subsequent testing
block. If the dominant language must be suppressed to
allow production in the non-dominant language, and if un-
doing such inhibition requires some time, then bilinguals
may produce fewer exemplars in the dominant language
after first being tested in the non-dominant language,
and may also exhibit greater evidence of cross-language
interference (in the form of longer fulcrum points in
English on the second than on the first testing block).
The evidence to support this proposal was limited. In
the analysis of number correct, there was a numerical
difference in the right direction (bilinguals produced just
under 1 fewer correct responses when tested in Spanish
first), but this difference was not significant (p = .18).
Similarly, in the errors analysis, bilinguals who were tested
in English first made more than twice as many cross-
language intrusions during subsequent testing in Spanish
(M = 1.1; SD = 1.2) as bilinguals tested in Spanish first
(M = 0.4; SD = 0.8); however, this difference was only
marginally significant (p = .09; note that we could not
test for testing-block effects on intrusion rate in English
fluency because only one bilingual produced one cross-
language intrusion in English fluency). All other pair-
wise comparisons of English first to English second, and
Bilingual verbal fluency 245
Spanish first to Spanish second in number correct, first
response latencies and fulcrum points were not significant
(all ps ≥ .25).
Discussion
In Experiment 2 we observed clear language dominance
effects on all response measures. Bilinguals produced
fewer responses in Spanish than in English, and were
slower to begin naming exemplars in Spanish than
in English. Most interestingly, fulcrum points were
longer in Spanish than in English, supporting the
notion of greater between-language interference for
production of the non-dominant Spanish than during
production of dominant English. To evaluate how robust
these language dominance effects were we examined
how many individual categories displayed language
dominance effects. Language dominance effects are quite
consistent across different categories. Bilinguals produced
fewer correct Spanish responses in all categories, and
demonstrated longer fulcrum points in Spanish than in
English in 10 of 12 categories. Finally, although we
observed no significant order effects on any response
measures, there was compelling evidence for between-
language interference in the form of cross-language
intrusion errors, which occurred primarily during non-
dominant language (Spanish) fluency trials and, though
rarely, were also observed when speakers completed the
task in their dominant language (English).
General discussion
This study tested three possible mechanisms of how
bilingualism affects verbal fluency: (a) interference
between languages; (b) reduced language-specific
language use (weaker links); and (c) reduced vocabulary
knowledge. All three mechanisms could explain
why bilinguals produce fewer correct responses than
monolinguals (Experiment 1), and fewer correct responses
in the non-dominant language (Experiment 2), but
additional measures allow us to distinguish between
these possible mechanisms to identify which is
primarily responsible for introducing the bilingual fluency
disadvantage. Three key types of evidence suggest
between-language interference has a powerful effect
on verbal fluency: (a) retrieval time-course (in both
Experiments 1 and 2); (b) word frequency counts of
responses given by bilinguals versus monolinguals in
Experiment 1; and (c) the rate of between-language
intrusion errors in Experiment 2.
Evidence supporting the interference account and the
dual-task analogy
Several findings we obtained support the interference
account via an analogy with dual-task effects on
monolingual fluency performance (Rohrer et al.,
246 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon
1995). First, bilinguals had proportionally delayed
responses (rightward-shifted fulcrum points) relative to
monolinguals (see Table 3), and these differences were
consistent across a variety of category types. In addition,
bilinguals had slower first response times (as seen in
dual- versus single-task testing conditions), and the
bilingual disadvantage emerged early in the fluency trial
(see Figure 3). Given their greater accessibility in both
languages, high-frequency words – which are produced
to a greater extent in the beginning of the fluency trial
(see Figure 2) – should create the most interference
between languages (Gollan et al., 2008). In contrast,
if the bilingual disadvantage were caused by reduced
vocabulary knowledge relative to monolinguals, then
bilinguals should have exhibited shorter fulcrum points,
and the disadvantage should have emerged towards the
end of the fluency trial when production of low-frequency
words increases.
Other data supporting the notion that interference
from the non-target language influences bilingual
verbal fluency performance came from a comparison
of dominant vs. non-dominant language fluency in
Experiment 2. Despite having a much-reduced vocabulary
in Spanish than in English, fulcrum points were longer
in Spanish than in English (see Table 5), and this result
was consistent across several different categories. Here,
as with the bilingual effect in Experiment 1, the difference
between dominant and non-dominant languages seemed
to emerge at the beginning of the trial (see Figure 4). The
lengthening of fulcrum points in Spanish versus English,
despite the robust differences in vocabulary size between
languages, implies that interference between languages
influences verbal fluency performance to a greater extent
than differences in vocabulary size. Finally, and perhaps
most compelling, nearly half (20/44) of the bilinguals
tested in both languages mistakenly produced an English
word in the middle of a Spanish fluency trial (on at least
one occasion). Cross-language intrusion errors arguably
provide the clearest possible evidence for interference
between languages.
Lastly, we consider whether the lengthening of the
fulcrum point could be attributed to bilinguals’ division of
language use across two different languages (i.e., weaker
links) without appealing to explicit interference between
languages. It might be possible for the weaker links
account to explain the small (1.5 seconds) right-ward shift
in fulcrum points in bilinguals relative to monolinguals
if retrieval slowing is cumulative across each response
produced (if semantic search and production of responses
cannot be carried out in parallel; see “Introduction”).
However, additional evidence provided support for
the interference account, and produced results that
are difficult to explain from the perspective of the
weaker links account. Specifically, bilinguals produced
significantly lower-frequency words than monolinguals in
Experiment 1. This result contrasts notably with previous
data which showed a greater bilingual disadvantage
for production of low-frequency than of high-frequency
words in a picture-naming task (Gollan et al., 2008;
Ivanova and Costa, 2008), and implies a stronger role
for interference between languages in verbal fluency than
in picture naming.
Finally, the higher rate of production of cognate
words in bilinguals than in monolinguals is also
consistent with the notion that dual-language activation
affects response selection in bilinguals completing the
fluency task. Although bilinguals in Experiment 1 were
English-dominant, immersed in an English-dominant
environment, and were tested exclusively in English,
their knowledge of Spanish nevertheless influenced the
responses they chose to produce. Cognate effects could
either reflect the online convergence of activation on
shared phonological representations between languages
during fluency generation itself (Costa et al., 2000;
Gollan and Acenas, 2004), or a joint-language frequency
updating mechanism for cognates in bilingual language
use (or both; see also “Discussion” in Experiment 1). In
either case, dual-language activation at some processing
stage must be assumed, and even though cognates
themselves facilitate lexical access in bilinguals, the dual-
language activation assumption seems quite consistent
with the notion of interference. Figure 5 shows how
the bilingual fluency disadvantage is driven entirely by
monolinguals’ higher production of non-cognates (and no
difference between groups for production of cognates).
Challenges for the interference account and the
dual-task analogy
Although our findings largely confirm the predictions
of the interference account, some aspects of the data
do present the interference notion with challenges. As
compelling as the presence of cross-language intrusions
were for supporting the notion of interference during
production of the non-dominant language, the almost
complete lack of such errors in dominant language
production in both Experiments 1 and 2 is puzzling
from the perspective of the interference account (not
one bilingual in Experiment 1, and only one bilingual
in Experiment 2, produced a Spanish intrusion during an
English fluency trial). The absence of Spanish intrusions
into English fluency trials in Experiment 2 is particularly
compelling, given that half of the bilinguals completed
a block of Spanish fluency trials prior to the English
fluency trials. In a similar vein, order effects were
not robust in Experiment 2. The absence of order
effects is consistent with the observation of short-lived
language switching effects (Meuter and Allport, 1999),
and implies that bilinguals can rapidly shift back into the

Figure 5. Mean number of non-cognates and cognates produced per category by English-dominant bilinguals and
monolinguals in letter-fluency and semantic-fluency trails in Experiment 1. Error bars show standard errors.
dominant language (for a different result in bilingual word
recognition, see Jared and Kroll, 2001).
Importantly, cross-language intrusions, even if
infrequent, imply dual-language activation. Thus, the
presence of at least some intrusions of words from the
non-dominant language into dominant language fluency
seem to call for an interference-based account, and the
presence of a monitoring process that prevents production
of words in the non-target language. The rarity of
intrusions into the dominant language (see also Poulisse,
1997; Poulisse and Bongaerts, 1994) may suggest that
the monitoring process is frequency sensitive, such that
lower-frequency concept names are blocked more easily
than high-frequency names (here we assume words in
the non-dominant language tend to be lower in frequency
than words in the dominant language, as implied in
Dijkstra and Van Heuven, 2002; see discussion in Duyck,
Vanderelst, Desmet and Hartsuiker, 2008; Gollan et al.,
2008). The possible sensitivity of a response monitor to
frequency leads to a more general prediction that within-
language intrusion errors (and perhaps also perseveration
errors) may be more likely to occur with relatively high-
frequency names (e.g., in generating responses to the
category “fruit”, a speaker might be more likely to intrude
a high-frequency fruit such as apple than a low-frequency
fruit such as pomegranate). Within-language intrusions
were rare in the current study. However, the analyses
presented here suggest that qualitative analysis of fluency
responses and errors (e.g., word-frequency count) may
provide further insights into the mechanisms of fluent
language production.
Another challenge to the interference account is that,
although it was significant, the difference in fulcrum point
Bilingual verbal fluency 247
between monolinguals and bilinguals (in Experiment 1)
was only about 4% for semantic categories and 5% for
letter categories (see Table 3). Similarly, the differences
in fulcrum points between dominant and non-dominant
language production was only 9% (see Table 5). In
notable contrast, the difference in fulcrum point between
single- and dual-task settings was 83% (Rohrer et al.,
1995, Experiment 2), a substantially larger difference. An
important consideration here is that, at least in some sense,
it simply must be the case that the degree of between-
language interference is restricted. If knowledge of two
languages were fully analogous to constant dual-tasking
then bilinguals should be (but are clearly not) obviously
impaired in speaking-related tasks, and people would
make an effort to avoid becoming bilingual whenever
possible. Furthermore, it is important to consider that,
to the extent that multiple mechanisms may concurrently
affect verbal fluency (i.e., between-language interference
which shifts fulcrum points to the right, and bilinguals’
reduced vocabulary knowledge, which shifts fulcrum
points to the left), this would reduce our ability to
observe the effects of interference on bilingual fluency
performance.
A final and more subtle challenge for the interference
account was our observation of an equally sized bilingual
disadvantage in the number of correct responses in
semantic and double-letter fluency. In prior work,
bilinguals were more disadvantaged for semantic than
letter fluency and this interaction was taken to support
the interference notion (Gollan et al., 2002; Rosselli et al.,
2000). Interference between languages is arguably more
likely to arise in semantic than in letter fluency because
translation equivalents are category members only in
248 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon
semantic, and not in letter, fluency. For example, when
producing dog during an “animals” fluency trial, the next
word that comes to mind might be the translation for dog
(perro), which also fits the category but can’t be produced
during an English fluency trial. In contrast, during a “d-
words” fluency trial, if the translation for dog becomes
active it will be relatively easy to suppress because the
Spanish word for dog does not begin with the target letter
d. Similarly, Rosselli et al. (2000) suggested that automatic
translation may be more likely during semantic than letter
fluency because semantic category members tend to be
more concrete (and concrete words are easier to translate
than abstract words; Tokowicz, Kroll, de Groot and Van
Hell, 2002).
Although we failed to observe an interaction between
semantic and letter fluency in number correct (possibly
because we used double-letter categories), other aspects
of our data are more consistent with prior findings. Most
obviously, our analysis of exemplar frequency showed that
bilinguals produced responses with significantly lower
frequency counts than monolinguals, but this difference
was significant only in the semantic fluency task and not
in letter fluency (i.e., the interaction between participant
and category type was significant; see Figure 2). Similarly,
our analysis of first-response latencies produced a trend
in the same direction and in Figure 3, which depicts
retrieval time course and number correct simultaneously,
the bilingual disadvantage appears to be larger in retrieval
from semantic (top panel) than double-letter categories
(bottom panel).
The mechanism of interference between languages
may operate simultaneously with other bilingual
advantages that affect letter fluency more than semantic
fluency, thus offsetting part of the bilingual disadvantage
(Bialystok, Craik and Luk, 2008a; see also Gollan et al.,
2002). Importantly, there are many possible differences
between semantic and letter fluency and within-category
type performance can also vary. For example, in
monolingual verbal fluency, semantic categories are
usually (Goulet, Pouliet and Joanette, 1989; Gurd and
Ward, 1989; Lezak, 1983; Martin, Wiggs, Lalonde and
Mack; 1994; Pasquier, Lebert, Grymonprez and Petit,
1995; Nelson and McEnvoy, 1979), but not always, more
difficult than letter categories (Azuma et al., 1997). As
such, there is reason to proceed with caution when
interpreting interactions between participant and category
type (whether as evidence for, or against, the notion of
interference during bilingual fluency performance).
This discussion highlights an important consideration
for understanding how bilingualism affects performance
in a variety of cognitive tasks. It may seem difficult to
understand why bilingual advantages arise in some tasks
that require executive control (e.g., Stroop; Bialystok
et al., 2008a; ANT; Costa et al., 2008), with disadvantages
in the verbal fluency task, which also requires executive
control. If bilinguals are better at managing response
conflict than monolinguals, then why doesn’t this
improved executive control also allow bilinguals to
overcome between-language interference in the fluency
task? Clearly, multiple cognitive mechanisms influence
performance in the verbal fluency task (and in many of the
other tasks that exhibit bilingual effects). Hence it appears
that the advantage bilingualism confers onto executive
control is relatively small compared with the disadvantage
it can produce in lexical access. Additionally, executive
control may be relatively less important in the verbal
fluency task than lexical accessibility.
Conclusions
The results of the current study imply the presence of
subtle but significant effects of dual-language activation
on language production. Even when speaking in their
dominant language, bilinguals are not able to “shut off”
activation of the non-dominant language and function
like monolingual speakers. A practical implication that
follows from this interpretation of our results is that
ultimately, bilinguals will be most fluent when they
are tested under conditions that minimize dual-language
activation. In picture naming tests, bilinguals’ naming
scores sometimes improve when they are given the option
to use either language (Kohnert, Hernandez and Bates,
1998; Gollan and Silverberg, 2001). However, in verbal
fluency, bilinguals are still disadvantaged relative to
monolinguals, and fluency scores do not improve when
bilinguals are given the option of using either language
(Gollan et al., 2002). Although the option to use either
language clearly confers some benefits, it seems that
lexical accessibility alone cannot drive language selection.
Thus, although the option of using either-language frees
bilinguals from having to restrict production to one
language, it also burdens them with having to choose
which language to use for each given utterance (for
detailed discussion, see Gollan and Ferreira, 2009). Our
interpretation of the current results further suggests that
language switching in the context of the verbal fluency
task may even lead bilinguals to have lower fluency scores
in some cases. Consistent with this hypothesis, healthy
older bilinguals do (but bilinguals with Alzheimer’s
disease do not) switch languages voluntarily during
the verbal fluency task (de Picciotto and Friedland,
2001).
The emergence of what appear to be significant
interference effects in dominant language production in
the context of the verbal fluency task contrasts with
previous findings that appeared to run in the opposite
direction of what the interference account predicts.
For example, in picture-naming tasks, the bilingual
 Bilingual verbal fluency 249

disadvantage was greater for low-frequency than for
high-frequency words (Gollan et al., 2008), and in
another study bilinguals experienced more TOTs than
monolinguals even for words they tended to know in just
one language (making competition between languages
impossible; Gollan and Acenas, 2004; see also Gollan,
Montoya et al., 2005). One way to understand the
difference in conclusions drawn across studies is to
assume (as outlined in the “Introduction”) that the verbal
fluency task is particularly sensitive to the possible effects
of interference between languages, as well as competition
for selection within languages (for both bilinguals and
monolinguals), because verbal fluency is a relatively
unconstrained production task. On this view, the fluency
task reveals, and possibly even enhances, competitive
effects within the production system because speakers
are given a single, and arguably quite impoverished, cue
for the purpose of retrieving several words in a relatively
long time-frame.
The implications of our results for understanding
bilingual language processing are that multiple
mechanisms are necessary to explain how bilingualism
affects language production. Specifically, interference
between languages, differences in vocabulary knowledge
and differences in frequency of use relative to
monolinguals may conjointly affect language production,
and different tasks will reveal different mechanisms of
bilingual effects in operation. More broadly speaking,
our results imply a significant, and perhaps sometimes
underestimated, role for selection by competition in
language production. A number of recent findings have
challenged the notion of language production as a
basically competitive process (for review, see Finkbeiner,
Gollan and Caramazza, 2006). Within the monolingual
literature, for example, co-activation of “has-a” forms
(e.g., car–bumper) facilitate production (in contrast to
coordinate forms which inhibit production; e.g., car–
truck; Costa, Alario and Caramazza, 2005). Similarly,
within the bilingual literature, co-activation of translation
equivalents facilitated production (Costa and Caramazza,
1999). Despite such experimental results, it may be
premature to abandon the idea of selection by competition
(cf. Finkbeiner et al., 2006). Indeed the presence of
bilingual advantages in non-linguistic tasks that require
resolution of response conflict (e.g., Bialystok et al.,
2005), and the similarities between dual-task effects
(Rohrer et al., 1995) and the bilingual effects we observed
in the current study, imply a significant role for general
mechanisms of cognitive control in language production
for all speakers (bilingual and monolingual).

Appendix A

Materials in Experiment 1

Double-letter
categories Semantic categories:

Small Large Small Medium Large

ab co things that cost < $1 cost more than $1000 cost between $1–$500
at cr function words adjectives nouns
ce en frequent travel jobs physical labor jobs occupations/jobs
cl ex spices produce items supermarket items
du fa airplane trip medications suitcase items types of clothing
ea li
es mi
ev pe
lu ra
sc sa
sm se
sn st
250 T. C. Sandoval, T. H. Gollan, V. S. Ferreira and D. P. Salmon
Appendix B
Materials in Experiment 2
baby things
beach clothing
farm animals
fruits
kitchen appliances
physical labor jobs
musical instruments
non-electric tools
spices
things with wheels
types of jewelry
vegetables
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