Center for the Study of Learning, Department of Pediatrics, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience, Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2021 Oct 15;42(15):4880-4895. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25587. Epub 2021 Jul 13.
Prior studies on the brain bases of arithmetic have not focused on (or even described) their participants' language backgrounds. Yet, unlike monolinguals, early bilinguals have the capacity to solve arithmetic problems in both of their two languages. This raises the question whether this ability, or any other experience that comes with being bilingual, affects brain activity for arithmetic in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare brain activity in 44 English monolinguals and 44 Spanish-English early bilinguals, during the solving of arithmetic problems in English. We used a factorial design to test for a main effect of bilingual Language Experience. Based on the known modulating roles of arithmetic operation and age, we used two arithmetic tasks (addition and subtraction) and studied two age groups (adults and children). When collapsing across operations and age, we found broad bilateral activation for arithmetic in both the monolingual group and the bilingual group. However, an analysis of variance revealed that there was no effect of Language Experience, nor an interaction of Language Experience with Operation or Age Group. Bayesian analyses within regions of interest chosen for their role in arithmetic further supported the finding of no effect of Language Experience on brain activity underlying arithmetic. We conclude that early bilingualism does not influence the functional neuroanatomy of simple arithmetic.
先前关于算术的大脑基础的研究并未关注（甚至未描述）其参与者的语言背景。然而，与单语者不同，早期双语者有能力用他们的两种语言解决算术问题。这就提出了一个问题，即这种能力或任何其他与双语有关的经验是否会影响双语者相对于单语者的算术大脑活动。在这里，我们使用功能磁共振成像来比较 44 名英语单语者和 44 名西班牙语-英语早期双语者在解决英语算术问题时的大脑活动。我们使用析因设计来检验双语语言经验的主要效应。基于算术运算和年龄的已知调节作用，我们使用了两个算术任务（加法和减法）并研究了两个年龄组（成人和儿童）。当我们跨运算和年龄进行汇总时，我们发现单语组和双语组都存在广泛的双侧算术激活。然而，方差分析显示，语言经验没有影响，语言经验与运算或年龄组之间也没有相互作用。在选择的与算术有关的感兴趣区域内进行的贝叶斯分析进一步支持了语言经验对算术基础大脑活动没有影响的发现。我们得出结论，早期双语并不影响简单算术的功能神经解剖学。
