Baron A, Wagley N, Hu X, Kovelman I. Neural Correlates of Morphosyntactic Processing in Spanish-English Bilingual Children: A Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study.
JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2023;
66:3500-3514. [PMID:
37643425 PMCID:
PMC10558145 DOI:
10.1044/2023_jslhr-22-00598]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/17/2022] [Revised: 02/20/2023] [Accepted: 05/16/2023] [Indexed: 08/31/2023]
Abstract
PURPOSE
The aim of this study was to examine the effects of early bilingual exposure on Spanish-English bilingual children's neural organization of English morphosyntactic structures. This study examines how children's age and language experiences are related to morphosyntactic processing at the neural level.
METHOD
Eighty-one children (ages 6-11 years) completed an auditory sentence judgment task during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. The measure tapped into children's processing of early-acquired (present progressive -ing) and later-acquired (past tense -ed and third-person singular -s) English morphosyntactic structures, the primary language of academic instruction.
RESULTS
We observed effects of syntactic structure and age. Early-acquired morphemic structures elicited activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus, while the later-acquired structures elicited additional activations in the left middle temporal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus (STG). Younger children had a more distributed neural response, whereas older children had a more focal neural response. Finally, there was a trending association between children's English language use and left STG activation for later-acquired structures.
CONCLUSION
The findings inform theories of language and brain development by highlighting the mechanisms by which age and language experiences influence bilingual children's neural architecture for morphosyntactic processing.
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