The Stroop task examines our ability to act in a goal-directed manner while ignoring irrelevant aspects of a stimulus, typically inducing cognitive conflict through semantic processing. Theories of bilingual processing and conflict monitoring suggest that semantic access and conflict resolution depend on language proficiency and context. Newly learned languages are thought to lack direct semantic access and thus elicit little cognitive conflict compared to a dominant language.

This study investigated cognitive control during early language learning, testing whether newly acquired words in an unfamiliar language produce Stroop conflict and how control adapts across language contexts. Participants learned color words in a novel language and then completed a vocal Stroop task.

Results showed that once a stimulus is semantically encoded, it can trigger interference. Interference decreased when stimulus and response languages were mismatched. Importantly, responding in the newly learned language still produced conflict, indicating engagement of similar cognitive control mechanisms as in the dominant language. While the dominant language operated with high automaticity, the newly learned language required greater effort, including translation processes.

These findings reveal dynamic, context-sensitive semantic access. Even minimal training can establish functional semantic representations sufficient to engage cognitive control similarly to well-known stimuli. In the context of language learning, this challenges the idea that early bilinguals experience strictly delayed semantic access.