A dual brain EEG examination of the effects of direct and vicarious rewards on bilingual Language control.

Little is known about whether direct and vicarious rewards affect bilingual language control in social learning. We used a dual-electroencephalogram (EEG) to simultaneously record the effects of direct and vicarious rewards on language control when bilinguals switched between their two languages. We found that both direct and vicarious rewards elicited more switch behavior. On an electrophysiological level, although both direct and vicarious rewards elicited Reward-positivity and Feedback-P3 when receiving reward outcomes, direct rewards induced greater reward effects than vicarious rewards. In addition to an N2 effect in language switching, vicarious rewards elicited more pronounced LPCs relative to direct rewards. More important, in the alpha band, there was a predictive effect of behaviors on rewards in binding vicarious rewards and language switching activities. These findings demonstrate that both direct and vicarious rewards influence language control during language selection.