3-182 - Early Linguistic Environment and Neurocognitive Adaptations: Examining the Bilingual Experience

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

A large proportion of children grow up in multilingual environments, and this early exposure to multiple languages has robust consequences for multiple aspects of children’s brain and cognitive development. Studying the multilingual child early in development may offer the unique opportunity to empirically test questions regarding the interplay between early linguistic experience and cognition. The first paper of this symposium examines differences between hearing 8-month-olds from monolingual and bilingual households in their ability to discriminate between two unfamiliar sign languages; results provide evidence of differences in perceptual attention capacities. The second paper investigates the links between developmental changes in mouth-looking and concurrent language skills among 6- to 12-month monolingual and bilingual infants. The third paper examines the independent and potentially interactive effects of bilingualism and socioeconomic status (SES) on memory skills for 18-month-old toddlers; findings demonstrate emerging differences in memory flexibility for infants exposed to multiple languages, independent of SES. The last paper examines differences in cortical thickness for SES-matched bilingual children of varying dual-language proficiency levels, with results demonstrating significantly thinner cortices for balanced bilinguals in areas of the brain associated with language and attention. These papers suggest that exposure to multiple languages may differentially affect specific attention and learning mechanisms due to neurocognitive adaptations to their early linguistic environments. Understanding early trajectories of language and cognitive development is crucial for the 11.2 million school-aged bilingual children in the U.S. and these findings have potential real-world implications for early education.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Natalie Hiromi Brito, Columbia University Medical Center

Individual Presentations

• Can you see the difference? The bilingual advantage in visual language discrimination is not speech-specific - Presenting Author: Loreto Nácar, Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Bencie Woll, University College of London; Marcel Giezen, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language; Robert Adam, University College of London; Janet Werker, University of British Columbia; Karen Emmorey, San Diego State University; Nuria Sebastian-Galles, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

• The roles of early language environment and language skills on infants’ visual attention to mouths - Presenting Author: Tawny Tsang, UCLA; Natsuki Atagi, University of California, Los Angeles; Scott Johnson, University of California Los Angeles

• Independent Effects of Bilingualism and Socioeconomic Status on Early Memory Skills - Presenting Author: Natalie Hiromi Brito, Columbia University Medical Center; William P Fifer, Columbia University Medical Center; Kimberly Noble, Columbia University

• Cortical Thickness in Balanced and Unbalanced Bilingual Children - Presenting Author: Pilar Archila-Suerte, University of Houston; Christine Chiarello, University of California - Riverside; Arturo Hernandez, University of Houston