Particularly, we expect to see differences in how monolinguals and bilinguals recruit domain-general executive regions (e.g., prefrontal cortex) to manage phonological competition, consistent with observations that the groups differ in the neural control of non-linguistic competition (Abutalebi et al., 2012, Bialystok et al., 2005, Gold et al., 2013 and Luk et al., 2010). In order to determine whether monolinguals and bilinguals differ in the executive control resources they recruit to manage phonological competition, the current study employs a modification of the visual world paradigm, adapted for use GSK458 with a button-box within a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner.

As participants hear an Hedgehog inhibitor object’s name and search for that object from an array of four images, their neural responses are expected to differ when an object in the search display shares initial phonological overlap with the presented name of the target (e.g., candy – candle) compared to when it does not (e.g., candy – snowman). Specifically, in the presence of phonological overlap, we expect to see recruitment of general executive control regions including prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate. However, the recruitment of frontal-executive regions is expected to vary between monolinguals and bilinguals, as we hypothesize that bilinguals’ behavioral efficiency at managing phonological competition (

Blumenfeld & Marian, 2011) reflects increased efficiency in cortical regions required for executive control. Phosphatidylethanolamine N-methyltransferase Neuroimaging research has examined bilinguals’ recruitment of executive control to manage switching between their two languages (for a review see Hervais-Adelman, Moser-Mercer, & Golestani, 2011). This has included research in both the production (e.g., Abutalebi et al., 2008, Hernandez et al., 2001 and Hernandez

et al., 2000) and comprehension (e.g., Abutalebi et al., 2007) domains. The link between executive control resources and the management of competition within a single language, however, remains unknown. Because bilinguals rely on efficient neural mechanisms for non-linguistic executive control (e.g., Abutalebi et al., 2012), and because non-linguistic inhibition has been behaviorally tied to the management of phonological competition (Blumenfeld & Marian, 2011), we propose that bilinguals will recruit an efficient network of control regions to overcome within-language competition. Seventeen Spanish–English bilinguals and eighteen English monolinguals participated in the current study. All participants were recruited from the University of Houston and were right-handed, healthy adults ranging in age from 18 to 27, with normal or corrected-normal vision and no history of neurological or psychiatric illness. Language group was determined by responses on the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q; Marian, Blumenfeld, & Kaushanskaya, 2007).