Sun Xin, Marks Rebecca A, Eggleston Rachel L, Zhang Kehui, Yu Chi-Lin, Nickerson Nia, Caruso Valeria, Chou Tai-Li, Hu Xiao-Su, Tardif Twila, Booth James R, Beltz Adriene M, Kovelman Ioulia
Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Neurobiol Lang (Camb). 2023 Apr 11;4(2):198-220. doi: 10.1162/nol_a_00092. eCollection 2023.
Diversity and variation in language experiences, such as bilingualism, contribute to heterogeneity in children's neural organization for language and brain development. To uncover sources of such heterogeneity in children's neural language networks, the present study examined the effects of bilingual proficiency on children's neural organization for language function. To do so, we took an innovative person-specific analytical approach to investigate young Chinese-English and Spanish-English bilingual learners of structurally distinct languages. Bilingual and English monolingual children ( = 152, () = 7.71(1.32)) completed an English word recognition task during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging, along with language and literacy tasks in each of their languages. Two key findings emerged. First, bilinguals' heritage language proficiency (Chinese or Spanish) made a unique contribution to children's language network density. Second, the findings reveal and patterns in children's patterns of task-related functional connectivity. Common across all participants were short-distance neural connections within left hemisphere regions associated with semantic processes (within middle temporal and frontal regions). Unique to more proficient language users were additional long-distance connections between frontal, temporal, and bilateral regions within the broader language network. The study informs neurodevelopmental theories of language by revealing the effects of heterogeneity in language proficiency and experiences on the structure and quality of emerging language neural networks in linguistically diverse learners.
语言经历的多样性和变异性，如双语能力，会导致儿童语言神经组织和大脑发育的异质性。为了揭示儿童神经语言网络中这种异质性的来源，本研究考察了双语能力对儿童语言功能神经组织的影响。为此，我们采用了一种创新的针对个体的分析方法，来研究结构不同语言的中英双语和西英双语的中国儿童学习者。双语儿童和英语单语儿童（ = 152，() = 7.71(1.32)）在功能近红外光谱神经成像过程中完成了一项英语单词识别任务，同时还完成了各自语言的语言和读写任务。出现了两个关键发现。首先，双语儿童的母语能力（中文或西班牙语）对儿童语言网络密度有独特贡献。其次，研究结果揭示了儿童任务相关功能连接模式中的 和 模式。所有参与者共有的是与语义过程相关的左半球区域内的短距离神经连接（在颞中回和额叶区域内）。更熟练的语言使用者独有的是在更广泛的语言网络中额叶、颞叶和双侧区域之间额外的长距离连接。该研究通过揭示语言能力和经历的异质性对语言多样化学习者新兴语言神经网络的结构和质量的影响，为语言神经发育理论提供了信息。
