Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Brain and Language journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/b&l Neural correlates for naming disadvantage of the dominant language in bilingual word production Yongben Fu a , Di Lu a , Chunyan Kang a , Junjie Wu a , Fengyang Ma b , Guosheng Ding a,c , Taomei Guo a,c, ⁎ a State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning & IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China b School of Education, University of Cincinnati, United States c Center for Collaboration and Innovation in Brain and Learning Sciences, Beijing Normal University, China ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Naming disadvantage Cognitive control Language production Bilingualism fMRI ABSTRACT The present study investigated the neural correlates of naming disadvantage of the dominant language under the mixed language context. Twenty one unbalanced Chinese-English bilinguals completed a cued picture naming task while being scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Behavioral results showed that naming pictures in the second lanuage (L2) was significantly slower than naming pictures in the first language (L1) under a single language context. When comparing picture naming in L2 to naming in L1, enhanced activity in the left inferior parietal lobule and left cerebellum was observed. On the contrary, naming pictures in Chinese (L1) was significantly slower than naming in English (L2) under the mixed language context. The fMRI results showed that bilateral inferior frontal gyri, right middle frontal gyrus, and right supplementary motor area were activated to a greater extent in L1 than in L2. These results suggest that the dominant language is inhibited to a greater extent to ensure the production of the second language under the mixed language context. Therefore, more attentional control resources are recruited when bilinguals produced the dominant language. The present study, for the first time, reveals neural correlates of L1 naming disadvantage under the mixed language context. 1. Introduction With the rapid development of globalization, a growing number of people have been learning and using a second language. As a result, research on bilingualism has become a hotspot in cognitive neu- roscience. For unbalanced bilinguals, one robust finding is that naming pictures in one’s native language (L1) is significantly faster than naming pictures in one’s second language (L2) under single language context (e.g., Christoffels, Firk, & Schiller, 2007; Gollan, Kleinman, & Wierenga, 2014; Ivanova & Costa, 2008), and speech errors are fewer in L1 than in L2 (e.g., Gollan et al., 2014). This naming advantage effect of the dominant language may arise from higher L1 word frequency and earlier age of acquisition of words (for a review, see Hanulová, Davidson, & Indefrey, 2011). Interestingly, in a study using the language switching paradigm where bilinguals need frequently switch between their two languages, Meuter and Allport (1998) found that the difference in overall reaction time between two languages was not significant under a mixed naming context. These results were also replicated by some recent studies (e.g. Declerck, Koch, & Philipp, 2012; Fink & Goldrick, 2014). Some other studies even showed that naming in L1 was significantly slower than naming in L2 in L1 dominant bilinguals (Christoffels et al., 2007; Costa & Santesteban, 2004; Costa, Santesteban, & Ivanova, 2006, Ex- periment 1 & 2; Declerck, Philipp, & Kock, 2013; Declerck, Thoma, Koch, & Philipp, 2015; Gollan & Ferreira, 2009; Gollan et al., 2014; Verhoef, Roelofs, & Chwilla, 2009), showing the L1 naming dis- advantage under the mixed language context. This phenomenon can be explained under the framework of the inhibitory control model pro- posed by Green (1998). According to this model, the lexical re- presentations in both languages are activated in parallel when bilin- guals speak a word (e.g., Colomé, 2001; Costa, Caramazza, & Sebastián- Gallés, 2000; Costa, Miozzo & Caramazza, 1999; Guo & Peng, 2006; Hoshino & Kroll, 2008), so they need to inhibit the activation of the non-target language to ensure the production of the target language. For unbalanced bilinguals, due to greater activation of the dominant language than the weaker language, stronger inhibition is required to suppress the dominant language to guarantee production of the weaker language, thus reducing the advantage effect of the dominant language, and leading to the L1 naming disadvantage. However, to our knowledge, the neural correlates underlying the L1 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2017.10.005 Received 3 March 2016; Received in revised form 3 September 2017; Accepted 21 October 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author at: State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. E-mail address: guotm@bnu.edu.cn (T. Guo). Brain and Language 175 (2017) 123–129 0093-934X/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. MARK