Bilingualism is never lost at brain level, although one of the languages is no longer used
Scientists from Canada have shown that children who learn a language when they are very small, and then they are adopted into families who speak another language –therefore children stop speaking the first one-, their brain becomes and continues to be bilingual. The study was carried out with Chinese children adopted into French families.
In an article published yesterday in Nature Communications, researchers from McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute (Canada) describe their discovery according to which an early exposure to a language, even if it is brief, influences how the brain processes sounds from a second language later on, even when the first language is no longer spoken.
The researchers asked three groups of children (aged 10 - 17 years old) with very different linguistic backgrounds to perform a task involving the identification of French pseudo-words (as for example, vapagne and chansette). One of the groups was born and raised in monolingual French-speaking families. The second group was formed by Chinese children who had been adopted into French-speaking families when they were less than three years old, and who stopped speaking Chinese, and from that point on they listened and spoke only French. The third group was formed by fluently bilingual children in Chinese and French.
As the children respond to the words they were listening, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at which parts of their brain were being activated.
Although all the groups performed the tasks equally well, the areas of the brain that were activated differed between the groups. Monolingual French children who had not been exposed to Chinese had activated the areas of the brain which were expected to intervene in the processing of language sounds, especially the left inferior frontal gyrus and the anterior insula. However, among the bilingual children (Chinese/French) and those who had been exposed to Chinese since they were young and then had stopped speaking it, other areas of the brain were activated, particularly the right middle frontal gyrus, the left medial frontal cortex, and the bilateral superior temporal gyrus.
The researchers observed that the Chinese Children who had been adopted into monolingual French families and no longer spoke Chinese, and therefore were functionally monolingual children at the time of testing, still had brains that processed language in a similar way to bilingual children.
“During the first year of life, as a first step in language development, infant’s brain are highly tuned to collect and store information about the sounds that are relevant and important to the language they hear around them”, said Lara Pierce, a doctoral student at McGill and the first author on the article, in the press note of the University, informs Tencencias21.
The researchers believe that their findings speak to the unique and lasting influence of early languages experiences on later brain organisation, as well as the brain’s ability to adapt to new language environments to master a new language.
The researchers are now interested in knowing whether similar areas of the brain would be activated if the languages that had been “lost” and “gained” through adoption are closer together than Chinese and French, such as French and Spanish, for example.
Another study of the same group had shown that there are always remainders of languages that had been learnt in the brain.
The researchers asked three groups of children (aged 10 - 17 years old) with very different linguistic backgrounds to perform a task involving the identification of French pseudo-words (as for example, vapagne and chansette). One of the groups was born and raised in monolingual French-speaking families. The second group was formed by Chinese children who had been adopted into French-speaking families when they were less than three years old, and who stopped speaking Chinese, and from that point on they listened and spoke only French. The third group was formed by fluently bilingual children in Chinese and French.
As the children respond to the words they were listening, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at which parts of their brain were being activated.
Although all the groups performed the tasks equally well, the areas of the brain that were activated differed between the groups. Monolingual French children who had not been exposed to Chinese had activated the areas of the brain which were expected to intervene in the processing of language sounds, especially the left inferior frontal gyrus and the anterior insula. However, among the bilingual children (Chinese/French) and those who had been exposed to Chinese since they were young and then had stopped speaking it, other areas of the brain were activated, particularly the right middle frontal gyrus, the left medial frontal cortex, and the bilateral superior temporal gyrus.
The researchers observed that the Chinese Children who had been adopted into monolingual French families and no longer spoke Chinese, and therefore were functionally monolingual children at the time of testing, still had brains that processed language in a similar way to bilingual children.
“During the first year of life, as a first step in language development, infant’s brain are highly tuned to collect and store information about the sounds that are relevant and important to the language they hear around them”, said Lara Pierce, a doctoral student at McGill and the first author on the article, in the press note of the University, informs Tencencias21.
The researchers believe that their findings speak to the unique and lasting influence of early languages experiences on later brain organisation, as well as the brain’s ability to adapt to new language environments to master a new language.
The researchers are now interested in knowing whether similar areas of the brain would be activated if the languages that had been “lost” and “gained” through adoption are closer together than Chinese and French, such as French and Spanish, for example.
Another study of the same group had shown that there are always remainders of languages that had been learnt in the brain.
Cátedra UNESCO de Tecnologías Lingüísticas