Dataset Information

A role for the cerebellum in the control of verbal interference: Comparison of bilingual and monolingual adults.

ABSTRACT: We evaluate brain structure sensitivity to verbal interference in a sentence interpretation task, building on previously reported evidence that those with better control of verbal interference show higher grey matter density in the posterior paravermis of the right cerebellum. We compare brain structure sensitivity to verbal interference control across two groups, English monolingual (N = 41) and multilingual (N = 46) adults. Using voxel-based morphometry, our primary goal was to identify and explore differences in regional patterns of grey matter sensitivity to performance on the sentence interpretation task, controlling for group variability in age, nonverbal reasoning and vocabulary knowledge. There was no group difference in performance but there was a significant group effect in grey matter sensitivity to task performance in our region of interest: stronger sensitivity in the paravermis in bilinguals compared to monolinguals in accuracy performance in the high (relative to low) verbal interference condition. This effect was observed when the linguistic interference was presented in an unfamiliar language (Greek) but not when presented in the familiar language (English). Our findings suggest that multilanguage acquisition mediates regional involvement within the language network, conferring enhanced functional plasticity within structures (including the paravermis) in the service of control of linguistic interference.

SUBMITTER: Filippi R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7173859 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A role for the cerebellum in the control of verbal interference: Comparison of bilingual and monolingual adults.

Filippi Roberto R Periche Tomas Eva E Papageorgiou Andriani A Bright Peter P

PloS one 20200421 4

We evaluate brain structure sensitivity to verbal interference in a sentence interpretation task, building on previously reported evidence that those with better control of verbal interference show higher grey matter density in the posterior paravermis of the right cerebellum. We compare brain structure sensitivity to verbal interference control across two groups, English monolingual (N = 41) and multilingual (N = 46) adults. Using voxel-based morphometry, our primary goal was to identify and ex ...[more]

PMID: 32315339

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Project description:This exploratory study assessed the use of functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine hemodynamic response patterns during sentence processing. Four groups of participants: monolingual English children, bilingual Chinese-English children, bilingual Chinese-English adults and monolingual English adults were given an agent selection syntactic processing task. Bilingual child participants were classified as simultaneous or sequential bilinguals to examine the impact of first language, age of second-language acquisition (AoL2A), and the length of second language experience on behavioral performance and cortical activation. Participants were asked to select the agent of four types of sentences: subject-verb-object (SVO), passive (PAS), subject-extracted relative clause (SR), and object-extracted relative clause (OR) adopted from the "Whatdunit" task by Montgomery et al. (2016). Semantic cues were removed by using inanimate nouns for agents and patients, which constrained participants to make decisions based on syntactic knowledge. Behavioral results showed greater accuracy for canonical SVO and SR sentence types than for noncanonical OR and PAS sentence types, which aligns with prior studies. Neuroimaging results revealed greater hemodynamic responses to relative clauses (i.e., SR and OR sentences) than to simple sentences (SVO and PAS), especially for Chinese-English bilinguals suggesting first-language transfer influencing sentence processing in English. The effects AoL2A and the length of second language experience showed no significant differences between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals or between bilingual adults and children for identifying the correct agent in each sentence. However, neuroimaging results demonstrated greater hemodynamic responses in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in simultaneous bilinguals compared to sequential bilinguals and greater hemodynamic responses in left and right DLPFC and left IPL among bilingual adults. Different behavioral and neural hemodynamic response patterns afford new insights into the effects of syntactic knowledge on sentence processing.

Dataset Information

A role for the cerebellum in the control of verbal interference: Comparison of bilingual and monolingual adults.

Publications

A role for the cerebellum in the control of verbal interference: Comparison of bilingual and monolingual adults.

Similar Datasets

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