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Cross-linguistic and bilingual effects on morphological awareness in young bilingual Chinese-English readers
Poster Session B, Friday, September 12, 4:30 - 6:00 pm, Field House
Wei-Hung Lin1,2, Nuo Chen2, Chi-Lin Yu3, Syuan-Yu Lin1, Yueh-Lin Li1, Xiao-Su Hu2, Shiou-Yuan Chen4, Li-Ying Fan5, Hsin-Chin Chen6, Twila Tardif2, Catherine McBride7, James R. Booth8, Ioulia Kovelman2, Tai-Li Chou1; 1National Taiwan University, 2University of Michigan, 3Oklahoma State University, 4University of Taipei, 5National Taipei University of Education, 6National Chung Cheng University, 7Purdue University, 8Vanderbilt University
Reading a word involves the integration of sound, meaning, and print supported by a distributed neural network. The superior temporal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus are involved in phonological processing, the middle and inferior temporal gyri support semantic processing, and the inferior frontal gyrus contributes to cognitive control. However, due to the linguistic differences between languages such as Chinese and English, children place different weights on sound-based and meaning-based processing during literacy development. To uncover the universal, language-specific, and bilingual effects in neural architecture for learning to read, we investigated the neural organization for word recognition in monolinguals and bilinguals in the US and Taiwan. We predicted that bilinguals would show the increased superior temporal gyrus and/or supramarginal gyrus activation in English (sound-based) processing, the greater middle temporal gyrus activation in Chinese (meaning-based) processing, and the elevated inferior frontal gyrus engagement in Chinese due to higher cognitive demands associated with their limited proficiency. The target sample size is 60 children per group, and the current findings were based on approximately 40 children per group. Forty-six English monolingual (mean age: 11.12 ± 1.68 years, range: 8.65 – 14.54) and 43 bilingual children (mean age: 10.85 ± 1.90 years, range: 7.23 – 14.54) from the United States completed a lexical morphology task during functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging. Future analysis will include 40 Chinese monolinguals to explore the nature of cross-linguistic transfer effects in Chinese processing in bilinguals. The current two groups were matched on age and several language abilities, including morphology, phonology, and word reading, although monolinguals exhibited greater vocabulary knowledge than bilinguals. During the imaging task, participants heard three spoken words sequentially (classroom-bedroom-mushroom) and indicated whether the 2nd or 3rd word was a better match on meaning to the 1st word (classroom). Behaviorally, cross-linguistic comparisons revealed faster reaction time in Chinese relative to English. Between-group comparisons revealed similar performance across bilinguals and monolinguals in English. fNIRS results revealed effects of bilingualism. In Chinese, bilingual children showed stronger activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus, whereas in English, they showed stronger activation in the bilateral supramarginal gyri. Notably, bilinguals’ Chinese vocabulary knowledge was negatively associated with the activation levels in inferior frontal gyrus in Chinese, suggesting that greater proficiency may reduce the cognitive control of morphological processing. This pattern indicates that for young bilingual children, English morphology engages more phonological pathways, while Chinese morphology demands greater cognitive control for language processing. Additionally, cross-linguistic transfer effects were observed. In English, the bilinguals exhibited greater activation in the left middle/inferior temporal gyrus and the right inferior frontal gyrus, whereas monolinguals showed enhanced engagement of the bilateral superior temporal gyri. These findings suggest that monolingual children rely more on sound-based processing in English, while bilingual children’s exposure to Chinese enhances meaning-based processing and requires additional cognitive control for semantic retrieval. Overall, this study demonstrates how early bilingual experience and linguistic characteristics interact to shape the developing neural architecture for reading. Young bilingual children appear to flexibly recruit language-specific networks, reflecting adaptations to both linguistic systems.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Morphology