Late Bilinguals Research Articles

Language control abilities of late bilinguals

Although all bilinguals encounter cross-language interference (CLI), some bilinguals are more susceptible to interference than others. Here, we report on language performance of late bilinguals (Russian/German) on two bilingual tasks (interview, verbal fluency), their language use and switching habits. The only between-group difference was CLI: one group consistently produced significantly more errors of CLI on both tasks than the other (thereby replicating our findings from a bilingual picture naming task). This striking group difference in language control ability can only be explained by differences in cognitive control, not in language proficiency or language mode.

Language intervention in French–English bilingual aphasia: Evidence of limited therapy transfer

Abstract This study investigated the effect of treatment in the second language (L2) for a previously proficient French-English bilingual with aphasia, at 5 years post-stroke. Assessment on the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) enabled objective measurement of language skills in each language, and comparison across languages, before and after treatment in L2 (English). Previous therapy had been provided exclusively in L1 (French). Pre-treatment assessment on the BAT revealed greater impairment in L2 than L1, indicating differential recovery and limited transfer from previous L1 intervention. Following treatment, re-assessment on the BAT in French and English showed significant gains in spoken expression and syntactic comprehension in L2 but not L1. Translation in both directions was unchanged. Gains in L2 did not exceed L1 pre-treatment scores. These results demonstrate language-specific improvement following treatment in L2, and indicate caution in assuming therapy transfer will occur in proficient, highly motivated late bilinguals. The use of the BAT as a cross-linguistically valid assessment tool is recommended for future bilingual aphasia research.

Brain activity in bilingual developmental dyslexia: An fMRI study

The aim of this study was to identify the neural substrates of an adult English-German bilingual with dyslexia (in both languages) during lexical decision-making using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). A lexical decision task with five conditions in a block design was employed (nonverbal shape judgment, lettercase judgment, regular word judgment, irregular word judgment, and nonword judgment), and the activation was compared to a non-dyslexic control bilingual and a control monolingual participant. Both of the control participants matched the dyslexic bilingual BK on age, sex, IQ, handedness, and education level. Results indicated that the bilingual adult with dyslexia was strongly right lateralized for stimuli that required phonological processing, a profile that differed particularly from the activation observed from the monolingual participant. These results are consistent with the idea of increased activation (mostly in the right hemisphere) during linguistic tasks in adults with dyslexia and in late proficient bilinguals relative to monolinguals. Findings also suggest that the additional activation observed in both of the bilinguals are similar, suggesting that these effects are not additive in the dyslexic bilingual.

Effects of phonological feedback on the selection of syntax: Evidence from between-language syntactic priming

Research on word production in bilinguals has often shown an advantage for cognate words. According to some accounts, this cognate effect is caused by feedback from a level that represents information about phonemes (or graphemes) to a level concerned with the word. In order to investigate whether phonological feedback influences the selection of words and syntactic constructions in late bilinguals, we investigated syntactic priming between Dutch and English genitive constructions (e.g., the fork of the girl vs. the girl's fork). The head nouns of prime and target constructions were always translation equivalents. Half of these were Dutch–English cognates with a large phonological overlap (e.g., vork–fork), the other half were non-cognates that had very few phonemes in common (e.g., eend–duck). Cognate status boosted between-language syntactic priming. Further analyses showed a continuous effect of phonological overlap for cognates and non-cognates, indicating that this boost was at least partly caused by feedback from the translation equivalents’ shared phonemes.

Neural mechanisms of language switch

Interest has continued in the neural substrates of language switch, which allows multilingual people to select an appropriate language. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural substrates for switching between different languages (cross-language switch) in comparison with those for switching between different tasks or between different action sequences. Subjects were 20 native Japanese (L1) speakers with moderate to high proficiency in English (L2). They were asked to judge pronunciation of visually presented Arabic numerals in either L1 or L2 (phonological judgment task) or the numerical meaning of the same stimuli (numerical judgment task). The switching of the tasks was semi-randomly cued by a background color change. Several brain regions showed significantly greater activity for the forward cross-language switching (L1 to L2) than the backward cross-language switching (L2 to L1). Such cross-language switch regions included the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), left superior temporal/supramarginal gyrus (STG/SMG), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and caudate nucleus. Among these cross-language switch regions, the left IFG and caudate nucleus were also involved in the task switching (switching between the phonological and numerical tasks). These findings were supported by an action-sequence switch experiment examining brain activity during switching among different tapping sequences. In the right PFC, moreover, activity during the forward cross-language switching was positively correlated with the subjects’ proficiency in L2. The present study suggests that the right PFC, left IFG, left STG/SMG, ACC, and caudate nucleus might subserve differential aspects of cross-language switch in late bilinguals. ► We examined the neural substrates of languages control compared with task control. ► Prefrontal, parietal, cingulate cortices and caudate nucleus were identified. ► The right prefrontal cortex was most specifically involved in language control. ► Activity in the rt. prefrontal cortex was correlated with 2nd language proficiency.

Lexical representation of nouns and verbs in the late bilingual brain

Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies of English and other Western languages suggest that basic lexical categories such as nouns and verbs are represented in different brain circuits. By contrast, research from Chinese indicates overlapping brain regions for nouns and verbs. How does a bilingual brain support the representation and organization of nouns and verbs from typologically distinct languages such as Chinese and English? In this fMRI study we examined the neural representations of nouns and verbs in late Chinese–English bilinguals. Results indicate that the late bilinguals, not surprisingly, showed no significant differences in brain activation for nouns versus verbs in Chinese. Surprisingly, they also showed little neural differentiation of nouns and verbs in English, suggesting the use of native language mechanisms for the processing of second language stimuli.

Neural bases of language switching in high and early proficient bilinguals

The left inferior frontal cortex, the caudate and the anterior cingulate have been proposed as the neural origin of language switching, but most of the studies were conducted in low proficient bilinguals. In the present study, we investigated brain areas involved in language switching in a sample of 19 early, high-proficient Spanish–Catalan bilinguals using a picture naming task that allowed contrasting switch and non-switch trials. Compared to the non-switching condition, language switching elicited greater activation in the head of the left caudate and the pre-SMA/ACC. When the direction of the switching was considered, the left caudate was more associated with forward switching and the pre-SMA/ACC with backward switching. The discussion is focused on the relevance of these brain structures in language control in early, high-proficient bilinguals, and the comparison with previous results in late bilinguals.

Grammatical knowledge of Korean heritage speakers

This paper examines the effects of onset age of exposure to a dominant language (English) with respect to Korean heritage speakers’ knowledge of unaccusativity involving quantifier float. In an attempt to see how the acquisition of heritage grammar is affected by this factor, the present study compares two groups of heritage speakers: early (US-born, n = 13) and late (Korean-born, n = 14) bilinguals. The results show that compared to the late bilinguals, the early bilinguals did not give differential ratings to unergative and unaccusative verbs, which confirms the widely noted observation that the earlier onset age of exposure to English is, the more likely heritage speakers’ linguistic knowledge of the heritage language is incomplete. In addition, the results show that incomplete knowledge was also found with the late bilinguals (mean onset age 9), in that they did not accept unaccusative verbs as strongly as the native controls did.

Hemisphere lateralization is influenced by bilingual status and composition of words

It has been generally accepted that the left hemisphere is more functionally specialized for language than the right hemisphere for right-handed monolinguals. But more and more studies have also demonstrated right hemisphere advantage for some language tasks with certain participants. A recent comprehensive survey has shown that hemisphere lateralization of language depends on the bilingual status of the participants, with bilateral hemispheric involvement for both languages of early bilinguals, who acquired both languages by age of 6, left hemisphere dominance for language of monolinguals, and also left hemisphere dominance for both languages of late bilinguals, who acquired the second language after age of 6. We propose a preliminary model which takes into account both composition of stimulus words and bilingual status of participants to resolve the apparent controversies regarding hemisphere lateralization of various reading experiments in the literature with focus on Chinese characters, and to predict lateralization patterns for future experiments in Chinese word reading. The bilingual status includes early bilingual, late bilingual and monolingual. However, we have tested this model only with late Chinese–English bilingual participants by using a Stroop paradigm in this paper, though the aim of our model is to disentangle the controversies in the lateralization effect of Chinese character reading. We show here with stimuli written in Chinese single characters that the Stroop effect was stronger when the stimuli were presented to the right than to the left visual field, implying that the language information and color identification/naming may interact more strongly in the left hemisphere. Therefore, our experimental results indicate left hemisphere dominance for Chinese character processing, providing evidence for one part of our model.

Cerebral localization and mechanism of writing in second language by early and late bilinguals

Objective To observe activated cerebral areas during the task of writing in second language by early and late acquisition bilinguals and explore the neuropsychological mechanism. Methods Twelve subjects were divided into group of early acquisition high proficiency bilinguals(EAHP) and group of late acquisition high proficiency bilinguals(LAHP). Each subject carried out the task of pseudo-writing and English writing. After functional imaging,statistical parametric mapping was used to compare data of the two tasks through paired- t test in both two groups. A conjunction analysis was conducted between the two groups also. Areas where the metabolism of glucose changed were analyzed. Then, the corresponding images about activated cerebral regions were obtained.Results Cerebral areas where the metabolism of glucose increased in EAHP: bilateral middle frontal gyrus( Z=4.35/2. 01 ), bilateral cerebellum ( Z = 2.97/2.53 ) and left head of caudate nucleus ( Z = 3.07 ), etc. Cerebral areas where the metabolism of glucose increased in LAHP: right superior frontal gyrus(Z=4.06), right cerebellum( Z=4.63), left putamen(Z=2.70) ,etc. Cerebral areas where the metabolism of glucose increased in compared data of LAHP with data of EAHP: right frontal gyrus ( Z = 2.92 ), right temporal lobe( Z = 2.31 ), etc. Conclusion Extensive cerebral cortex and subcortical structures participate the process of writing in the second language. Age of bilingual acquisition is one of the factors affecting cerebral localization of writing in second language. Key words: Second language; Writing; Bilingual; Localization

Is there a relation between onset age of bilingualism and enhancement of cognitive control?

Young English-speaking monolingual and bilingual adults were examined for English proficiency, language use history, and performance on a flanker task. The bilinguals, who were about twenty years old, were divided into two groups (early bilinguals and late bilinguals) according to whether they became actively bilingual before or after the age of ten years. Early bilinguals and monolinguals demonstrated similar levels of English proficiency, and both groups were more proficient in English than late bilinguals. In contrast, early bilinguals produced the smallest response time cost for incongruent trials (flanker effect) with no difference between monolinguals and late bilinguals. Moreover, across the whole sample of bilinguals, onset age of active bilingualism was negatively correlated with English proficiency and positively correlated with the flanker effect. These results suggest a gradient in which more experience in being actively bilingual is associated with greater advantages in cognitive control and higher language proficiency.

Brain Areas Activated and Cognitive Approaches Adopted in L2 Phonological Process

Logographic Chinese and alphabetic English exhibit a sharp contrast in both phonology and orthography.Although about eighty-five percent of present-day Chinese characters are phonetic compounds containing a phonetic component that may give information about the pronunciation of the compound,estimates of the validity of this information reveal that only thirty-eight percent of phonetic components are helpful for the pronunciation of whole characters(Perfetti Tan,1999).However,the pronunciation of most English words is known largely predictable based upon grapheme-to-phoneme conventions.Given the huge difference,what is the cognitive and neural-anatomical mechanism when those bilinguals,whose native language is Chinese and who learn English as a second language(L2),are performing a phonological task on English words has attracted much attention in cognitive science.This paper was to find out the possible approaches adopted by those bilinguals in L2 phonological process and to locate the brain areas activated in the process as well. Twenty-nine Chinese post-graduates(13 females and 16 males;aged 23 to 24),who were late bilinguals presumably with high proficiency in English,participated in the experiment.They were asked to judge the rhymes of real-word pairs,which were of high frequency,regular grapheme-phoneme correspondence and high lexicality,and meanwhile,they were given some pronounceable pseudoword pairs and control-letter pairs(consonant-letter strings) to judge too.Functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) was employed to scan their brain areas activated in the process,and E-prime was used to record their behavioral performance.The fMRI experiment was done in 6 sessions,each of which contained 3 blocks respectively corresponding to rhyme decision of read-word pairs,pronounceable pseudoword pairs,and font size decision of control-letter pairs. The results obtained from behavioral measurement and fMRI analysis showed that these late bilinguals were at approximately the same speed in judging the real-word pairs and pseudoword pairs(MD=3.27;p=0.9320.05),but much faster in judging the control-letter pairs(MD=214.95;P0.01);that their brain areas activated in L2 phonological process involved the left dorsal lateral frontal system,the left ventral prefrontal system,the dorsal aspect of left inferior parietal system,and the bilateral ventral occipitotemporal system where the phonological process of their mother tongue works;and that the brain areas activated as a whole were strongly left-lateralized,but the areas in occipital lobe(Asymmetric Index:-0.10) and cerebellum(Asymmetric Index:-0.03) were slightly right-lateralized. In a word,the late proficient bilinguals were found to employ the same brain areas in phonological process for both their mother tongue and L2,and they appeared to be taking an assembled approach rather than an addressed approach to L2 phonological process.

Spanish gender agreement under complete and incomplete acquisition: Early and late bilinguals' linguistic behavior within the noun phrase

The present study explores knowledge of Spanish grammatical gender in both comprehension and production by heritage language speakers and second language (L2) learners, with native Spanish speakers as a baseline. Most L2 research has tended to interpret morphosyntactic variability in interlanguage production, such as errors in gender agreement, as a lack of native-like representation in the learner's grammar because of maturational constraints. From this perspective, adult English-speaking learners of Spanish are incapable of acquiring gender fully, whereas heritage Spanish speakers, who have been exposed to the language from birth, can attain complete gender acquisition. However, results of two tasks, one measuring written comprehension and the other oral production, show that advanced proficiency L2 learners, as well as advanced proficiency heritage speakers, have gender in their underlying grammars, and that the errors in oral production that L2 learners occasionally produce are due to difficulties in the surface manifestations of the abstract features of gender, i.e., the “mapping problem” (Lardiere, 2007).

The efficiency of attentional networks in early and late bilinguals: the role of age of acquisition.

Previous studies have demonstrated a bilingual advantage in the efficiency of executive attention. A question remains, however, about the impact of the age of L2 acquisition and relative balance of the two languages on the enhancement of executive functions in bilinguals, and whether this is modulated by the similarity of the bilingual's two languages. The present study explores these issues by comparing the efficiency of attentional networks amongst three groups of young adults living in Australia: English monolinguals and early and late Chinese–English bilinguals. We also address the impact of bilingualism on hemispheric lateralization of cognitive functions, which is of interest since a recent study on early bilinguals revealed reduced hemispheric asymmetry in attentional functioning. In the present study, participants performed a modified version of the lateralized attention network test. Both early and late bilinguals were found to have more efficient executive network than monolinguals. The late bilinguals, who were also reported to be more balanced in the proficiency and usage of their two languages, showed the greatest advantage in conflict resolution, whereas early bilinguals seemed to show enhanced monitoring processes. These group differences were observed when controlling for non-verbal intelligence and socioeconomic status. Such results suggest that specific factors of language experience may differentially influence the mechanisms of cognitive control. Since the bilinguals had distinct language sets, it seems that the influence of bilingualism on executive functions is present regardless of the similarity between the two languages. As for hemispheric lateralization, although the results were not clear-cut, they suggest the reduced lateralization in early bilinguals.

Event-Related Brain Potential Investigation of Preparation for Speech Production in Late Bilinguals

It has been debated how bilinguals select the intended language and prevent interference from the unintended language when speaking. Here, we studied the nature of the mental representations accessed by late fluent bilinguals during a rhyming judgment task relying on covert speech production. We recorded event-related brain potentials in Chinese–English bilinguals and monolingual speakers of English while they indicated whether the names of pictures presented on a screen rhymed. Whether bilingual participants focussed on rhyming selectively in English or Chinese, we found a significant priming effect of language-specific sound repetition. Surprisingly, however, sound repetitions in Chinese elicited significant priming effects even when the rhyming task was performed in English. This cross-language priming effect was delayed by ∼200 ms as compared to the within-language effect and was asymmetric, since there was no priming effect of sound repetitions in English when participants were asked to make rhyming judgments in Chinese. These results demonstrate that second language production hinders, but does not seal off, activation of the first language, whereas native language production appears immune to competition from the second language.

Individual Differences in Audio-Vocal Speech Imitation Aptitude in Late Bilinguals: Functional Neuro-Imaging and Brain Morphology

An unanswered question in adult language learning or late bi and multilingualism is why individuals show marked differences in their ability to imitate foreign accents. While recent research acknowledges that more adults than previously assumed can still acquire a “native” foreign accent, very little is known about the neuro-cognitive correlates of this special ability. We investigated 140 German-speaking individuals displaying varying degrees of “mimicking” capacity, based on natural language text, sentence, and word imitations either in their second language English or in Hindi and Tamil, languages they had never been exposed to. The large subject pool was strictly controlled for previous language experience prior to magnetic resonance imaging. The late-onset (around 10 years) bilinguals showed significant individual differences as to how they employed their left-hemisphere speech areas: higher hemodynamic activation in a distinct fronto-parietal network accompanied low ability, while high ability paralleled enhanced gray matter volume in these areas concomitant with decreased hemodynamic responses. Finally and unexpectedly, males were found to be more talented foreign speech mimics.

The Time Course of Emotion Effects in First and Second Language Processing: A Cross Cultural ERP Study with German?Spanish Bilinguals

To investigate whether second language processing is characterized by the same sensitivity to the emotional content of language – as compared to native language processing – we conducted an EEG study manipulating word emotional valence in a visual lexical decision task. Two groups of late bilinguals – native speakers of German and Spanish with sufficient proficiency in their respective second language – performed each a German and a Spanish version of the task containing identical semantic material: translations of words in the two languages. In contrast to theoretical proposals assuming attenuated emotionality of second language processing, a highly similar pattern of results was obtained across L1 and L2 processing: event related potential waves generally reflected an early posterior negativity plus a late positive complex for words with positive or negative valence compared to neutral words regardless of the respective test language and its L1 or L2 status. These results suggest that the coupling between cognition and emotion does not qualitatively differ between L1 and L2 although latencies of respective effects differed about 50–100 ms. Only Spanish native speakers currently living in the L2 country showed no effects for negative as compared to neutral words presented in L2 – potentially reflecting a predominant positivity bias in second language processing when currently being exposed to a new culture.

Semantic and world knowledge integration during l2 sentence reading

Event Abstract Back to Event Semantic and world knowledge integration during l2 sentence reading Clara D. Martin1*, Xavier Garcia1, Audrey Breton2, Guillaume Thierry3 and Albert Costa1 1 Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain 2 Université de Lyon - CNRS, France 3 University of Bangor, United States The main goal of the present study was to investigate difficulties in sentence reading in a second (L2) compared to a first language. Sentences that we hear or read can be meaningful or not (e.g., Mozart composed classical/orange music) and can be true or false (e.g., Mozart composed classical/jazz music). Hagoort et al. (2004) tested the temporality of meaning and truth integration during sentence comprehension. They recorded Event-related Potentials (ERPs) from participants who had to read silently correct sentences (e.g., Mozart composed classical music), sentences with semantic violations (e.g., Mozart composed orange music) and sentences with world knowledge violations (e.g., Mozart composed jazz music). ERP data revealed that integration of both semantic and world knowledge during sentence reading happens in parallel (both violation effects observed 400 ms after the critical word presentation; N400 effect). In the present study, we investigated semantic and world knowledge violations during reading in L2. We hypothesized that difficulties in reading in L2 might be due to difficulties in world knowledge integration. While recording ERPs, we presented Spanish-English late bilinguals with correct sentences, sentences with semantic violations and sentences with world knowledge violations. Semantic violations induced a N400 effect, as previously observed in monolinguals (Hagoort et al., 2004). While world knowledge also produced a N400 effect in monolinguals, the effect was delayed in bilinguals (P600 effect). We concluded that L2 readers integrate semantic as monolinguals do, but integrate world knowledge later on in the processing stream. This delay in world knowledge integration might be one of the reasons why reading is more laborious in L2 than in L1. Keywords: EEG, Language Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Sessions: Neural Bases of Language Citation: Martin CD, Garcia X, Breton A, Thierry G and Costa A (2011). Semantic and world knowledge integration during l2 sentence reading. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00292 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 22 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Clara D Martin, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, claramartin3@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Clara D Martin Xavier Garcia Audrey Breton Guillaume Thierry Albert Costa Google Clara D Martin Xavier Garcia Audrey Breton Guillaume Thierry Albert Costa Google Scholar Clara D Martin Xavier Garcia Audrey Breton Guillaume Thierry Albert Costa PubMed Clara D Martin Xavier Garcia Audrey Breton Guillaume Thierry Albert Costa Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Verbal working memory of Korean–English bilinguals: An fMRI study

This study investigated whether different brain areas are involved during working memory tasks related to first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed on 24 bilingual native Korean speakers who acquired English as their L2 after the age of 12. Their L2 proficiency ranged from low to moderate. The images were acquired while the participants performed word recognition tasks in their L1 and L2. Different areas of activation were identified for Korean and English verbal working memory (KVWM and EVWM) tasks and more right hemisphere activation was found during L2 processing than during L1 processing. Direct comparison between activation during L1 and L2 processing revealed that additional hemisphere regions were recruited during the EVWM condition than during the KVWM condition, but no significantly greater activation occurred during the KVWM task than during the EVWM task. This pattern of results indicates that distinct brain areas are associated with L1 and L2 processing, and more diverse and right hemisphere areas are activated during L2 processing compared to L1 processing among low to moderately proficient late bilinguals. The activated areas during L2 processing relative to L1 processing were the left precuneus (BA 7), right superior parietal lobule (BA 7), left middle occipital gyrus (BA 19), and left cerebellum, suggesting that participants might rely more on visual cues and visual processing for word recoding and visual analysis during L2 processing than during L1 processing. It is also plausible that participants engaged in attention-based rehearsal during L2 processing.

Integrated knowledge of agreement in early and late English–Spanish bilinguals

ABSTRACTResearch suggests that late bilinguals may have persistent difficulties with the automatic access and use of some second language structures because of a lack of underlying integrated knowledge of those structures. In contrast, early bilinguals show advantages in aspects of language use that require this type of automatic knowledge. This study investigated whether early and late English–Spanish bilinguals evidence integrated knowledge of agreement in Spanish by examining their sensitivity to agreement errors while reading for comprehension. The results of a pilot and two experiments indicate that both early and late bilinguals do possess integrated knowledge of subject–verb number agreement and noun–adjective gender agreement in Spanish, although sensitivity to agreement errors interacts with properties of the experimental stimuli.