Brain bases of English morphological processing: A comparison between Chinese‐English, Spanish‐English bilingual, and English monolingual children

• Published in: Developmental science Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. e13251 - n/a
• Main Authors: Sun, Xin, Marks, Rebecca A., Zhang, Kehui, Yu, Chi‐Lin, Eggleston, Rachel L., Nickerson, Nia, Chou, Tai‐Li, Hu, Xiao‐Su, Tardif, Twila, Satterfield, Teresa, Kovelman, Ioulia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Wiley 01.01.2023; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc; John Wiley and Sons Inc
• Subjects: Bilingualism; Brain - physiology; brain development; Brain Hemisphere Functions; Child; Child, Preschool; Children; Chinese; Chinese‐English bilingual; Comparative Analysis; Diagnostic Tests; East Asian People; English; English (Second Language); fNIRS; Humans; Information processing; Language; Language Acquisition; Language Development; Language Processing; Language Proficiency; Monolingualism; morphological processing; Morphology; Morphology (Languages); Multilingualism; Native Language; Neuroimaging; Neurolinguistics; Neurological Organization; Second Language Learning; Spanish; Spanish‐English bilingual; Superior temporal gyrus; Task Analysis; Temporal gyrus; Word processing; brain development; morphological processing; Spanish-English bilingual; fNIRS; Chinese-English bilingual; bilingualism
• ISSN: 1363-755X; 1467-7687; 1467-7687
• DOI: 10.1111/desc.13251

How do early bilingual experiences influence children's neural architecture for word processing? Dual language acquisition can yield common influences that may be shared across different bilingual groups, as well as language‐specific influences stemming from a given language pairing. To investigate these effects, we examined bilingual English speakers of Chinese or Spanish, and English monolinguals, all raised in the US (N = 152, ages 5–10). Children completed an English morphological word processing task during fNIRS neuroimaging. The findings revealed both language‐specific and shared bilingual effects. The language‐specific effects were that Chinese and Spanish bilinguals showed principled differences in their neural organization for English lexical morphology. The common bilingual effects shared by the two groups were that in both bilingual groups, increased home language proficiency was associated with stronger left superior temporal gyrus (STG) activation when processing the English word structures that are most dissimilar from the home language. The findings inform theories of language and brain development during the key periods of neural reorganization for learning to read by illuminating experience‐based plasticity in linguistically diverse learners.