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Bilingual language experience and neural recruitment during verbal and non-verbal cognitive control
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Poster D95 in Poster Session D, Wednesday, October 25, 4:45 - 6:30 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Shanna Kousaie1; 1University of Ottawa
It has been hypothesized that bilinguals benefit from superior cognitive/executive control abilities compared to monolinguals due to the constant management of their two languages. While behavioural evidence is inconsistent, neuroimaging findings generally support this hypothesis. However, there is a lack of research that examines what and how specific language experiences influence cognitive control and its neural correlates, and whether these effects are the same for verbal and non-verbal tasks. The current investigation aims to compare the influence of different bilingual language experiences (e.g., age of second language acquisition, attained proficiency, language usage patterns) on neural recruitment during the performance of verbal and non-verbal cognitive control tasks. Young adult bilinguals (data collection is ongoing; currently n=15) completed a colour-word Stroop task and an arrows Simon task in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. For the Stroop task, participants identified the colour of the font of control (i.e., non-words printed in colour), congruent (i.e., colour words printed in the matching colour), and incongruent (i.e., colour words printed in a different colour) stimuli. For the Simon task participants used lateralized response keys to identify the direction of arrows either presented in the centre of the screen (i.e., control trials), on the same side of the screen as the correct response (i.e., congruent trials) or on the opposite side of the screen (i.e., incongruent trials), or to identify the opposite direction of centrally presented arrows (i.e., reverse condition). In addition, comprehensive language experience measures were collected, including both self-report and objective measures. Preliminary analyses show canonical behavioural effects (i.e., increases in response time and decreases in accuracy for incongruent and reverse trials compared to control and congruent trials), confirming that the tasks were effectively tapping into cognitive control processes. There were no significant correlations between language experience factors (i.e., age of second language acquisition, relative self-reported language proficiency, relative language usage, and self-reported code-switching frequency) and behavioural effects; although there was a trend suggesting that the more frequently individuals code-switch, the larger their inhibition effect in the Simon task. In terms of the fMRI results, for each task the brain regions that showed greater recruitment for the conflict condition (i.e., congruent and incongruent trials) compared to control trials were identified. Largely overlapping brain regions were observed across the two tasks, including bilateral frontal and inferior parietal regions. Neural activation was extracted from these brain regions for each participant and related to language experience factors. Relative language usage predicted the increase in neural recruitment for conflict compared to control trials in the left inferior frontal gyrus during Simon task performance; no other significant relationships were found, although some trends were observed. The preliminary results suggest that different language experiences are associated with differential effects on verbal and nonverbal cognitive control tasks. Data collection is ongoing and additional language experience variables (e.g., objective measures of proficiency and language entropy) will be explored in the larger sample to identify the contributions of a wide range of language experience factors on verbal and non-verbal cognitive control tasks.
Topic Areas: Control, Selection, and Executive Processes, Multilingualism