Listening in the Moment: How Bilingualism Interacts With Task Demands to Shape Active Listening.

Jennifer Krizman,Nina Kraus,Adam Tierney,Trent Nicol

doi:10.3389/fnins.2021.717572

Jennifer Krizman, Nina Kraus + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.717572

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Abstract

While there is evidence for bilingual enhancements of inhibitory control and auditory processing, two processes that are fundamental to daily communication, it is not known how bilinguals utilize these cognitive and sensory enhancements during real-world listening. To test our hypothesis that bilinguals engage their enhanced cognitive and sensory processing in real-world listening situations, bilinguals and monolinguals performed a selective attention task involving competing talkers, a common demand of everyday listening, and then later passively listened to the same competing sentences. During the active and passive listening periods, evoked responses to the competing talkers were collected to understand how online auditory processing facilitates active listening and if this processing differs between bilinguals and monolinguals. Additionally, participants were tested on a separate measure of inhibitory control to see if inhibitory control abilities related with performance on the selective attention task. We found that although monolinguals and bilinguals performed similarly on the selective attention task, the groups differed in the neural and cognitive processes engaged to perform this task, compared to when they were passively listening to the talkers. Specifically, during active listening monolinguals had enhanced cortical phase consistency while bilinguals demonstrated enhanced subcortical phase consistency in the response to the pitch contours of the sentences, particularly during passive listening. Moreover, bilinguals’ performance on the inhibitory control test related with performance on the selective attention test, a relationship that was not seen for monolinguals. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that bilinguals utilize inhibitory control and enhanced subcortical auditory processing in everyday listening situations to engage with sound in ways that are different than monolinguals.

Highlights

IntroductionBilingualism Influences Online Listening (Mitchell and Quittner, 1996; Khan et al, 2005)
Language experience leaves a pervasive imprint on the brain
A relationship between performance on the selective attention task and the inhibitory control test was seen only in bilinguals. These results suggest that bilinguals utilize inhibitory control and enhanced subcortical auditory processing in real-world listening situations and are consistent with the hypothesis that bilingualism leads to mechanistic differences in how the brain engages with sound (Abutalebi et al, 2011; Ressel et al, 2012; Costa and Sebastián-Gallés, 2014; García-Pentón et al, 2014; Krizman et al, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

Bilingualism Influences Online Listening (Mitchell and Quittner, 1996; Khan et al, 2005) Through their interconnected development, the executive and auditory systems become strongly tethered (Baddeley, 2003; Kral et al, 2016). While language exposure facilitates development of auditory and executive systems in everyone (Conway et al, 2009; Kronenberger et al, 2020), the experience of learning two languages results in additional strengthening of the executive system in bilinguals (Mechelli et al, 2004; Abutalebi and Green, 2007; Abutalebi et al, 2011; Gold et al, 2013; Costa and SebastiánGallés, 2014). There is evidence that this daily tuning leads to bilingual advantages, relative to monolinguals, on tasks assessing inhibitory control [reviewed in Bialystok (2011), though some have failed to replicate this advantage, Paap et al, 2015; Dick et al, 2019]

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