The assumption that everyday language switching trains bilinguals’
executive functions (EF) presupposes that language switching engages
domain-general EF. This study examined associations between three types
of tasks in a group of Finnish-English late bilinguals: everyday
language switching frequency assessed with Ecological Momentary
Assessment, language switching performance on a cued bilingual naming
task, and EF as measured with Simon, Flanker, and Number-letter tasks.
Cued switching performance showed mainly positive associations with EF
performance, but the associations between everyday language switching
and cued switching performance, and between everyday switching and the
EF tasks were largely against our hypotheses. The findings indicate that
participants with lower monitoring capacity make more everyday language
switches. This speaks against the idea that everyday language switching
would facilitate executive functioning. The results suggest that
associations between language switching and general EF are more complex
than current models assume.