We present three studies examining evaluative associations as manifestations of implicit attitudes towards languages in three sociolinguistically distinct bilingual communities: Lombard–Italian, Moselle Franconian–German, and Welsh–English. Using a Go/No-Go Association Task (GNAT) that controls for spurious priming effects and subsequently allows split analyses, study 1 evidenced strongly negative attitudes towards Lombard across measures. Study 2 uncovered a similar trend towards Moselle Franconian, but only in response to pictures following words that required a Go response, not for pictures that followed non-target words. In study 3, although the GNAT failed to detect any significant associations, split analysis revealed that participants responded faster to positive pictures following non-target English words. Therefore, by splitting data according to the Go/NoGo status of the attitude object, we can achieve finer characterizations of implicit attitudes, while highlighting the prominent role of sociolinguistic context in modulating activation of each language in regional/minority language communities.
Tamburelli et al. (2026) studied this question.