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Associations among the home language environment and neural activity during infancy.

ABSTRACT: Characteristics of the home language environment, independent of socioeconomic background, may account for disparities in early language abilities. Past studies have reported links between the quantity of language input within the home and differences in brain function during early childhood. The current study examined associations between home language input and EEG brain activity in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 6- to 12-month-old infants (N?=?94). Replicating past studies, a positive correlation was found between measures of socioeconomic status and language input. Examining links between language input and brain activity, analyses yielded a negative association, with children who heard more adult words in the home demonstrating reduced EEG beta power (13-19?Hz) in the parietal region. Exploratory analyses revealed a significant interaction between language input and the amount of chaos and disorganization in the home. Specifically, among children living in high-chaos households, children who heard more adult words tended to have reduced EEG activity. Among children living in low-chaos homes, there was no link between adult word count and children's EEG activity. These findings demonstrate the importance of the early home environment context in shaping neurocognitive trajectories.

SUBMITTER: Brito NH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7200831 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Associations among the home language environment and neural activity during infancy.

Brito Natalie H NH Troller-Renfree Sonya V SV Leon-Santos Ana A Isler Joseph R JR Fifer William P WP Noble Kimberly G KG

Developmental cognitive neuroscience 20200425

Characteristics of the home language environment, independent of socioeconomic background, may account for disparities in early language abilities. Past studies have reported links between the quantity of language input within the home and differences in brain function during early childhood. The current study examined associations between home language input and EEG brain activity in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 6- to 12-month-old infants (N = 94). Replicating past studies, a positive ...[more]

PMID: 32510343

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Project description:Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we identified cortical regions mediating interpretive processes that take place during language comprehension. We manipulated participants' interpretation of texts by asking them to focus on action-, space-, or time-related features while listening to identical short stories. We identify several cortical regions where activity varied significantly in response to this attention manipulation, even though the content being processed was exactly the same. Activity in the posterior and anterior sections of the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which are thought to have different sensitivities to high-level language processing, was modulated by the listeners' attentional focus, but in ways that were quite different. The posterior left IFG (Pars Opercularis) showed different activity levels for the three conditions. However, a population coding analysis demonstrated similar distributions of activity across conditions. This suggests that while the gain of the response in the Pars Opercularis was modulated, its core organization was relatively invariant across the experimental conditions. In the anterior left IFG (Pars Triangularis), the analysis of population codes revealed different activity patterns between conditions: there was little similarity between activity during time-attention and action- and space-attention, however there were similar activity patterns while attending to space and action information. In addition, both the left superior temporal gyrus and sulcus showed greater activity in the space and action attention conditions when contrasted with time attention. We discuss these findings in light of work on the role of left IFG in processing semantic information in language, and in light of theories suggesting that temporal information in language is processed in the brain using similar mechanisms as spatial information. Our findings suggest that a substantial source of variance in neural activity during language comprehension emerges from the internally-driven, information-seeking preferences of listeners rather than the syntactic or semantic properties of a text.

Project description:BackgroundA rich language environment is an important element of a nurturing home environment. Despite their proven importance, vocabulary and conversation have been shown to vary widely across households-even within the same socio-economic class. One significant gap in the existing literature is its nearly exclusive geographic focus on Western and developed settings, with little attention given to poorer communities in lower/middle income countries. The purpose of this study was to empirically illustrate the characteristics of the home language environment in the low SES, non-Western cultural setting of rural China.MethodsUsing Language Environment Analysis (LENA) automated language-analysis system, this study measured the home language environment of 38 children aged 20-27 months in Northwest rural China. Our primary measures of the home language environment were Adult Word Count (AWC), Conversational Turn Count (CTC) and Child Vocalization Count (CVC). Multivariate linear regression models were used to examine the association between home language environment and family/child characteristics, and language skills (Measured by MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory score).ResultsIn this paper, by comparison, we found that the home language environment of our rural sample fell far behind that of urban households. We also identify significant, positive correlations between language skills and both AWC and CTC. Our analysis finds no significant correlations between home language environment and family/child characteristics.ConclusionIn this paper, we present the first ever findings using the LENA system to measure the home language environment of young children from poor rural communities in China. We found that the home language environment of lower-SES household was significantly worse than high-SES households, and demonstrated the importance of the home language environment to language skills, pointing to a need for more high-quality studies of the home language environment in rural China to better understand possible mechanisms behind low levels of parent-child language engagement and ways to improve the home language environment.

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Associations among the home language environment and neural activity during infancy.

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Associations among the home language environment and neural activity during infancy.

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