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Resting-state electroencephalography and event-related potentials to lexical tone processing in bilingual Mandarin-English children
Poster Session D, Saturday, September 13, 5:00 - 6:30 pm, Field House
Elliot Blin1, Edriana Cruz1, Victoria Billack2, Xingtong Chen1, Benjamin Lee3, Yan Yu3; 1The Bronx High School of Science, 2Saddle Brook Middle/High School, 3Saint Johns University
Resting-state brain activity has long been used as an index of brain development in both neuroscience and clinical research. However, it remains unclear whether early individual differences in resting brain activity have meaningful predictive value for brain functions related to language experience. In this study, we employed a multi-deviant oddball paradigm and recorded event-related potentials using a 65-channel EEG system from Mandarin-English bilingual adults and children aged 5 to 10. The auditory stimuli consisted of bisyllabic nonwords, with the tone of the first syllable set as either Tone 1 or Tone 2 in the deviant conditions, and Tone 3 in the standard condition. EEG data were collected from 17 adults and 35 children, with the child participants divided into two age groups: 18 children aged 5 to 7 and 17 children aged 8 to 10. We calculated theta power during the resting-state condition as well as from responses to the standard and deviant stimuli. In addition, we measured P1 amplitudes from the source-reconstructed waveforms. Correlational analyses revealed a significant relationship between resting-state theta power and theta power observed during speech processing. Furthermore, the P1 amplitudes from the source waveforms showed clear developmental changes and hemispheric differences. These findings offer new insights into the neural networks supporting speech development and suggest that resting brain activity may be meaningfully linked to language-related brain functions in early childhood.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Language Development/Acquisition