Language Proficiency Can Determine How Similarly First And Second Languages Are Represented In The Brain

By Emma L. Barratt Researchers widely agree that first and second languages are handled similarly in the brain. According to previous research, proficient bilinguals’ brain activity is broadly quite similar when accessing their first and second languages. However, the literature exploring this until now has relied on imaging methods that can tell us where in the brain there is activity, but not how languages are represented in those areas. Distinct patterns of activation may have differentiated first and second languages in those same regions all this time, and by relying on traditional forms of imaging analysis alone, we could have been none the wiser. Thanks to new imaging methods, however, we’re finally able to take a look at activation in these areas in a much more detailed way. Now, newly published work from Emily Nichols at The University of Western Ontario and colleagues suggests that languages are represented more distinctly than we thought. For this study, the researchers gathered a sample of 32 bilingual English and Mandarin speakers living in Beijing. All participants spoke English as their first language, and Mandarin as their second. As might be expected, the age of acquisition (AoA) and proficiency of Mandarin — as measured by self-report and pre-testing, respectively — varied from person to person. During their fMRI scans, participants were presented with a picture-word matching task in both English and Mandarin. For each trial o...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Brain Language Source Type: blogs