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May 01, 2024;291 120592.

Neural substrates of L2-L1 transfer effects on phonological awareness in young Chinese-English bilingual children.

Jia-Wei Kou, Li-Ying Fan, Hsin-Chin Chen, Shiou-Yuan Chen, Xiaosu Hu, Kehui Zhang, Ioulia Kovelman, Tai-Li Chou
Author Information
  1. Jia-Wei Kou: Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan.
  2. Li-Ying Fan: Department of Education, National Taipei University of Education, Taipei, Taiwan.
  3. Hsin-Chin Chen: Department of Psychology, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Taiwan.
  4. Shiou-Yuan Chen: Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Taipei, Taipei, Taiwan.
  5. Xiaosu Hu: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
  6. Kehui Zhang: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
  7. Ioulia Kovelman: Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
  8. Tai-Li Chou: Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. Electronic address: tlchou25@ntu.edu.tw.
PMID: 38548037 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120592

Abstract

The growing trend of bilingual education between Chinese and English has contributed to a rise in the number of early bilingual children, who were exposed to L2 prior to formal language instruction of L1. The L2-L1 transfer effect in an L1-dominant environment has been well established. However, the threshold of L2 proficiency at which such transfer manifests remains unclear. This study investigated the behavioral and neural processes involved when manipulating phonemes in an auditory phonological task to uncover the transfer effect in young bilingual children. Sixty-two first graders from elementary schools in Taiwan were recruited in this study (29 Chinese monolinguals, 33 Chinese-English bilinguals). The brain activity was measured using fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy). Bilingual children showed right lateralization to process Chinese and left lateralization to process English, which supports more on the accommodation effect within the framework of the assimilation-accommodation hypothesis. Also, compared to monolinguals, bilingual children showed more bilateral frontal activation in Chinese, potentially reflecting a mixed influence from L2-L1 transfer effects and increased cognitive load of bilingual exposure. These results elucidate the developmental adjustments in the neural substrates associated with early bilingual exposure in phonological processing, offering valuable insights into the bilingual learning process.

Keywords

Bilingualism Development Learning Phonology fNIRS

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Grants

  1. R01 HD092498/NICHD NIH HHS
  2. R01 HD111637/NICHD NIH HHS

MeSH Term

Child
Humans
Multilingualism
Linguistics
China
Journal Article
Article has an altmetric score of 3

Word Cloud

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