ERIC Number: EJ1327118
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Mar
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1467-7687
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Available Date: N/A
Bilingualism Alters Infants' Cortical Organization for Attentional Orienting Mechanisms
Arredondo, Maria M.; Aslin, Richard N.; Werker, Janet F.
Developmental Science, v25 n2 e13172 Mar 2022
A bilingual environment is associated with changes in the brain's structure and function. Some suggest that bilingualism also improves higher-cognitive functions in infants as young as 6-months, yet whether this effect is associated with changes in the infant brain remains unknown. In the present study, we measured brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in monolingual- and bilingual-raised 6- and 10-month-old infants. Infants completed an orienting attention task, in which a cue was presented prior to an object appearing on the same (Valid) or opposite (Invalid) side of a display. Task performance did not differ between the groups but neural activity did. At 6-months, both groups showed greater activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in frontal regions (left hemisphere for bilinguals, right hemisphere for monolinguals). At 10-months, bilinguals showed greater activity for Invalid (> Valid) trials in bilateral frontal regions, while monolinguals showed greater brain activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in left frontal regions. Bilinguals' brain activity trended with their parents' reporting of dual-language mixing when speaking to their child. These findings are the first to indicate how early (dual) language experience can alter the cortical organization underlying broader, non-linguistic cognitive functions during the first year of life.
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Cognitive Ability, Infants, Spectroscopy, Brain Hemisphere Functions, Language Usage, Attention, Performance
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
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Language: English
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