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The Influence of Bilingualism on Neural Connectivity in Children’s Reading Development
Poster Session A - Sandbox Series, Thursday, October 24, 10:00 - 11:30 am, Great Hall 3 and 4
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Kehui Zhang1, Xin Sun2, Valeria Caruso3, Ioulia Kovelman3; 1NYU Shanghai, 2University of British Columbia, 3University of Michigan
The journey of reading and literacy development in children is significantly influenced by their bilingual experiences. This study examines how distinct language profiles—specifically English monolingual, Chinese-English bilinguals, and Spanish-English bilinguals—shape the functional neural networks that support reading. Research in cross-linguistic perspectives typically highlights the differences in learning to read between alphabetic languages like Spanish and English, which emphasize phonological associations, and logographic languages like Chinese, which emphasize semantic associations. This differentiation in phonological and semantic processing potentially influences the development of literacy, prompting an investigation into how children's neural connectivity is affected when they learn to read in two languages with differing orthographic demands. To explore these dynamics, we conducted a study with three groups: English monolinguals (N = 50), Chinese-English bilinguals (N = 69), and Spanish-English bilinguals (N = 59), all aged 5-10 years. Participants were born in either Chinese or Spanish speaking households in the U.S. and attended schools where English was the medium of instruction. During the sessions, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging was utilized while children engaged in phonological and morphological awareness tasks in English, structured within an oddball task paradigm. Functional connectivity will be analyzed using the Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (GIMME) method, which constructs directed functional connectivity maps by defining regions of interest (ROI) through unified structural equation models. The impact of bilingual experience on neural connectivity will subsequently be assessed using a mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA), with a focus on differences among the language experience groups. Our findings will aim to elucidate both universal and language-specific processing mechanisms underlying children's literacy development, and to demonstrate how bilingualism modifies the neural pathways involved in learning to read. By detailing the distinct neural adaptations in bilingual children, the study will contribute valuable insights into the cognitive neuroscience of language, offering implications for educational strategies tailored to diverse linguistic backgrounds. This research will highlight the complexity and adaptability of the developing brain in multilingual contexts, enriching our understanding of bilingualism's role in educational achievement and cognitive development.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Language Development/Acquisition