Neural signatures of second language learning and control

Abstract

Experience with multiple languages has unique effects on cortical structure and information processing. Differences in gray matter density and patterns of cortical activation are observed in lifelong bilinguals compared to monolinguals as a result of their experience managing interference across languages. Monolinguals who acquire a second language later in life begin to encounter the same type of linguistic interference as bilinguals, but with a different pre-existing language architecture. The current study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore the beginning stages of second language acquisition and cross-linguistic interference in monolingual adults. We found that after English monolinguals learned novel Spanish vocabulary, English and Spanish auditory words led to distinct patterns of cortical activation, with greater recruitment of posterior parietal regions in response to English words and of left hippocampus in response to Spanish words. In addition, cross-linguistic interference from English influenced processing of newly-learned Spanish words, decreasing hippocampus activity. Results suggest that monolinguals may rely on different memory systems to process a newly-learned second language, and that the second language system is sensitive to native language interference.

Implicit Vocabulary Learning during Sleep Is Bound to Slow-Wave Peaks

“…Here, we examine a more complex form of sleep encoding, namely rapid implicit relational binding of vocabulary, which is called paired-associates learning in the psychological literature. Paired-associates learning draws on the episodic memory system [19,20], which critically depends upon the hippocampus. In humans, hippocampus-assisted relational learning is generally believed to require consciousness during encoding [21][22][23].…”

Benefits of foreign language learning and bilingualism: An analysis of published empirical research 2012–2019

“…Bartolotti, Bradley, Hernandez, and Marian () demonstrated how one's experience with multiple languages might have unique effects on the cortical structure and information processing. Specifically, differences in gray matter density and patterns of cortical activation were observed in lifelong bilinguals as a result of their experiences managing interference across languages when compared to those in monolinguals.…”

Bilingual language processing: A meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies

“…This preliminary search returned a total of 1448 results. Three additional studies were identified through other resources (i.e., Hanulovà et al, 2011;Tanner et al, 2014;Bartolotti et al, 2017) yielding a total of 1451 results. Duplicates were removed from this initial set leading to a total of 739 results.…”