06 Emma Salja Bilingual Paper presentation

Background  Bilinguals can voluntarily control which language is used  Distinguish language heard/read  Which language speech is to be produced in  Inhibition of non-selected language

 Proficient bilinguals activate same brain regions regardless of which language presented or produced (Abutalebi, & Perani, 2005).  Neural circuits for different languages are overlapping/ interconnected but don’t indicate how brain controls language in use

Question & Hypothesis  What brain areas are responsible for language control?  DV: brain activation (fMRI & PET)  IV: Language of target  Target & prime semantics  Target & prime language

 Hypothesis?  They didn’t really have one…

Methods  Subjects (German-English & Japanese-English bilinguals)visually shown pairs of words (i.e. troutSALMON) in sequence  Language  Pairs semantically similar/different  Target and prime were in same/different language

 Ignore first word (prime) & make decision based on meaning of second word (target)  Time between prime & target optimized for priming, but not long enough to predict target (250 ms)

 Task presented while subjects being scanned (fMRI & PET)

 No significant effect of target language on accuracy

Results

 Some variance in visual cortex activation  Semantic priming in left ventral anterior temporal lobe is languageindependent  Language-dependent semantic priming only in left caudate (LC)  Reduced activation when semantically similar prime & target in same language

Discussion  Suggest that LC plays a role in sensing change in language OR word semantics  LC seems to function for language control  Neuropsychological study on particular trilingual patient with white matter lesions around LC  Retained comprehension in all 3  Involuntarily switched between languages during production tasks

Limitations & Next Step Limitations  Characters/word varied between languages  Sample size/bilingual group (~ 10-15)  Tested only GermanEnglish & JapaneseEnglish bilinguals

Next Step  Determine adjacent & connecting pathways  Test other bilingual groups  Check effect of varying proficiencies (one language more dominant then other)

Final Note Strengths

Weaknesses

 Interesting Topic

 Difficult to read

 Tested bilinguals from completely separate linguistic families

 No clear question, hypothesis or variables

 Equivalent linguistic proficiencies

 Not enough information or detail regarding subjects & procedures

References  Abutalebi, J., & Perani, D. (2005). the neural basis of first and second language processing. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15, 202-206.  Aso, T., Crinion, J., Fukuyama, H., Green, D. W., Grogan, A., Hanakawa, T.,…Urayama, S. (2006). Language control in the bilingual brain. Science, 312, 1537-1540. doi: 10.1126/science.1127761.