Infants' Emerging Functional Specialization in Bilingual Language Acquisition and Attentional Processes

Arredondo Maria M, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Richard N. Aslin at Haskins Laboratories and Dr. Janet F. Werker at University of British Columbia, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist, investigating how early bilingual experiences shape the mind and brain during infancy. Recent years have featured a sudden increase in global migration and growth of multilingual communities. Language acquisition is the greatest predictor of success in school and later life. The research proposed here aims to examine how early bilingual experiences impact language outcomes, early cognition and brain development. The findings (1) will advance our understanding of how being raised bilingual prepares an infant for later learning, (2) could ultimately inform educational practices for young learners as well as policy practices that revolve around language resources and needs, and (3) aid in the design of effective educational pedagogies for linguistically diverse families. Cognitive and neural development arises partly from everyday learning experiences, including language acquisition. Infants acquire language effortlessly, yet bilingual babies must learn twice as many words. To successfully acquire their languages, bilingual babies must differentiate each language, track its features, and keep these representations separate. However, the doubling of linguistic contexts may impose an increased demand on attentional mechanisms that support bilinguals' management of their languages. Thus, some suggest that a bilingual environment should heighten and improve attentional control mechanisms (i.e., the ability to focus selectively and cast out unnecessary information). One way to examine how early bilingual experiences impact cognition is by establishing the developmental nature of these changes, while infants are beginning to distinguish their languages and whether this experience alters the plasticity of brain networks and consequently behavior. The present project examines whether managing two languages during infancy alters attentional mechanisms, and supports language outcomes. It is hypothesized that as bilingual infants gain proficiency at distinguishing their languages, their brain responses and behavior for attentional control will also show different developmental patterns than monolingual infants. Ninety infants will participate in a session at 6- and 9-months. Infants will include 30 monolingual English learning, 30 bilingual English-Chinese learning, and 30 bilingual English-other language learning. Parents will complete questionnaires on their child's language experiences, vocabulary knowledge, and a behavioral report on attentional control; these forms will also be mailed to parents when children are 12-, 18- and 24-months old. The study will use functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to measure brain activity, and eye-tracking technology to measure infants' performance. Infants will sit on their parents' lap while completing a visuo-spatial attentional control task and a language-discrimination task. The study's methodology is innovative, as it incorporates neuroimaging and eye-tracking techniques simultaneously, as part of a longitudinal brain-behavior approach with young infants. Thus, it will introduce innovative methods linking neuroimaging and behavioral data to better characterize infant capabilities. More broadly, this work will inform developmental theories on how early life experiences, such as bilingualism, impact early cognition and brain plasticity. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.