Multilingualism and fMRI: Longitudinal Study of Second Language Acquisition
نویسندگان
چکیده
BOLD fMRI is often used for the study of human language. However, there are still very few attempts to conduct longitudinal fMRI studies in the study of language acquisition by measuring auditory comprehension and reading. The following paper is the first in a series concerning a unique longitudinal study devoted to the analysis of bi- and multilingual subjects who are: (1) already proficient in at least two languages; or (2) are acquiring Russian as a second/third language. The focus of the current analysis is to present data from the auditory sections of a set of three scans acquired from April, 2011 through April, 2012 on a five-person subject pool who are learning Russian during the study. All subjects were scanned using the same protocol for auditory comprehension on the same General Electric LX 3T Signa scanner in Duke University Hospital. Using a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) for statistical analysis, proficiency measurements are shown to correlate significantly with scan results in the Russian conditions over time. The importance of both the left and right hemispheres in language processing is discussed. Special attention is devoted to the importance of contextualizing imaging data with corresponding behavioral and empirical testing data using a multivariate analysis of variance. This is the only study to date that includes: (1) longitudinal fMRI data with subject-based proficiency and behavioral data acquired in the same time frame; and (2) statistical modeling that demonstrates the importance of covariate language proficiency data for understanding imaging results of language acquisition.
منابع مشابه
Second language lexical development and cognitive control: A longitudinal fMRI study.
In this paper we report a longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study that tested contrasting predictions about the time course of cognitive control in second language (L2) acquisition. We examined the neural correlates of lexical processing in L2 learners twice over the course of one academic year. Specifically, while in the scanner, participants were asked to judge the lan...
متن کاملThe production of lexical categories (VP) and functional categories (copula) at the initial stage of child L2 acquisition
This is a longitudinal case study of two Farsi-speaking children learning English: ‘Bernard’ and ‘Melissa’, who were 7;4 and 8;4 at the start of data collection. The research deals with the initial state and further development in the child second language (L2) acquisition of syntax regarding the presence or absence of copula as a functional category, as well as the role and degree of L1 influe...
متن کاملThe Role of Sociolinguistics in Second Language Acquisition
Learning a new language also involves learning a broad system of norms for social relations.This study broadly showed how EFL learners’ speech act is conveyed from their nativecultures when they are communicating in English and demonstrated that there are somepossibilities of cross-cultural misunderstanding when interlocutors are engaged in the speechact of complimenting with native speakers of...
متن کاملA Dynamical System Approach to Research in Second Language Acquisition
Epistemologically speaking, second language acquisition research (SLAR) might be reconsidered from a complex dynamical system view with interconnected aspects in the ecosystem of language acquisition. The present paper attempts to introduce the tenets of complex system theory and its application in SLAR. It has been suggested that the present dominant traditions in language acquisition research...
متن کامل