TY - JOUR
T1 - Evoked and oscillatory EEG activity differentiates language discrimination in young monolingual and bilingual infants
AU - Nacar Garcia, Loreto
AU - Guerrero-Mosquera, Carlos
AU - Colomer, Marc
AU - Sebastian-Galles, Nuria
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by grants from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013): ERC grant agreement number 323961 (Under Control); the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI2015-66918-P) and the Catalan Government (SGR 2014–1210). We want to thank Judith Schmitz who helped designing the scripts for stimuli presentation; Silvia Blanch and Xavier Mayoral for technical support; Mikayla Blumenthal for revising the manuscript; Alba Ayneto and Mathilde Fort for discussions and all families and infants who participated in the study.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Language discrimination is one of the core differences between bilingual and monolingual language acquisition. Here, we investigate the earliest brain specialization induced by it. Following previous research, we hypothesize that bilingual native language discrimination is a complex process involving specific processing of the prosodic properties of the speech signal. We recorded the brain activity of monolingual and bilingual 4.5-month-old infants using EEG, while listening to their native/dominant language and two foreign languages. We defined two different windows of analysis to separate discrimination and identification effects. In the early window of analysis (150–280 ms) we measured the P200 component, and in the later window of analysis we measured Theta (400–1800 ms) and Gamma (300–2800 ms) oscillations. The results point in the direction of different language discrimination strategies for bilingual and monolingual infants. While only monolingual infants show early discrimination of their native language based on familiarity, bilinguals perform a later processing which is compatible with an increase in attention to the speech signal. This is the earliest evidence found for brain specialization induced by bilingualism.
AB - Language discrimination is one of the core differences between bilingual and monolingual language acquisition. Here, we investigate the earliest brain specialization induced by it. Following previous research, we hypothesize that bilingual native language discrimination is a complex process involving specific processing of the prosodic properties of the speech signal. We recorded the brain activity of monolingual and bilingual 4.5-month-old infants using EEG, while listening to their native/dominant language and two foreign languages. We defined two different windows of analysis to separate discrimination and identification effects. In the early window of analysis (150–280 ms) we measured the P200 component, and in the later window of analysis we measured Theta (400–1800 ms) and Gamma (300–2800 ms) oscillations. The results point in the direction of different language discrimination strategies for bilingual and monolingual infants. While only monolingual infants show early discrimination of their native language based on familiarity, bilinguals perform a later processing which is compatible with an increase in attention to the speech signal. This is the earliest evidence found for brain specialization induced by bilingualism.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85062799411&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-018-20824-0
DO - 10.1038/s41598-018-20824-0
M3 - Article
C2 - 29426859
AN - SCOPUS:85062799411
SN - 2045-2322
VL - 8
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
IS - 1
M1 - 2770
ER -