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Mediation Effects of Bilingual Language Variability on RS EEG Oscillations: A Large-Scale Investigation
Poster C26 in Poster Session C, Wednesday, October 25, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Eleonora Rossi1, Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares2, Toms Voits3, Megan Nakamura1, Kirill Elin3, Jason Rothman3; 1University of Florida, 2Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 3UiT the Arctic University of Norway, 9019 Tromsø
An increasing number of studies show that bilingualism reshapes the brain and under certain conditions can modulate its ability to process information (see reviews in Green & Abutalebi, 2013; Pliatsikas et al., 2019). While much previous work has focused on the effects of bilingual experience on executive function using a combination of behavioral and electrophysiological methodology, recent literature has shown that “task-free” electrophysiological techniques (e.g., resting state EEG) are also excellent methods to test the extent to which bilingual experiences might result in neural adaptations (Bice et al., 2020; Pereira Soares et al., 2020). Resting state EEG (rs-EEG) measures intrinsic neural activity and temporal dynamics of functioning brain networks at rest (Buzsáki, 2006). Distinct EEG oscillations have been linked to differential mechanisms that sustain relevant cognitive systems, such as working memory (Miller, et al., 2018), inhibition/cognitive control (Klimesch et al., 2007) and language processing (Bornkessel et al., 2004; Giraud & Poeppel, 2012). Within the neurocognition of bilingualism field, previous literature has shown that bilinguals have greater frequency power and coherence (i.e., functional connectivity) between scalp regions than monolinguals (Bice et al., 2020), and that individual variables of the dual language experience (e.g., age of acquisition (AoA), language use at home and societal contexts, and proficiency) modulate neural correlates of the same two measures (Pereira Soares et al., 2020). In the present study, we combined 5-minute eyes closed rs-EEG data collected by several labs spread across the globe (central Europe, Scandinavia, and the USA) leading to a final sample of 400+ bilinguals with various degrees of bilingual engagement patterns and experiences. Among other factors, participants varied with regards to their language background, geographical location, and bilingualism type (comprised of a mixture of both early and late bilinguals with different degrees of language attainment). Measures of power (within all frequency bands) and coherence are computed for the brain data, whereas bilingual variables such as AoA of the L2/2L1, Duration of Bilingualism, and language Entropy are extracted from the relevant background questionnaires (LSBQ, Anderson et al., 2018; LHQ, Li et al., 2019). Mediation analyses are underway to understand the modulatory role of bilingual language experiences on rs-EEG power and coherence in this large heterogeneous sample, but crucially to understand the (possible) mediative role that context of acquisition and bilingual type/attainment might have within this dataset. This paper, a first of its kind in terms of (brain) sample size and diversity of bilingual types/contexts, has the potential to break new grounds when it comes to understanding if modulatory and mediatory effects are linked to the (social) context in which bilingual languages develop and how bilingualism as a dynamic experience may be a source of outcomes at a neural level.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Methods