Bilingual language production is widely believed to be a
competitive process. Bilinguals may manage this competition
by relying on inhibiting one language while speaking in the
other. However, it remains unclear if this process relies on
domain general inhibitory mechanisms, and, if so, when and
where during language production inhibitory control is
applied. The current study investigates these issues by
experimentally manipulating demand on inhibitory control
using a picture word interference task during a language
switching paradigm. Switching costs were not exacerbated
when inhibitory control was taxed; in fact language switching
was less costly during inhibition-demanding trials. These
findings do not support the idea that inhibitory control
mechanisms underlie language switching and suggest that
language switching and the resolution of within-language
lexical competition do not share inhibitory resources.