Science & Technology - Posted by Bob Roseth-UW on Wednesday, September 7, 2011 11:25 - 4 Comments 
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Bilingual brain may start to fade by age 1
In the current study, babies from monolingual (English or Spanish) and bilingual (English and Spanish) households wore caps fitted with electrodes to measure brain activity with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, a device that records the flow of energy in the brain. Babies heard background speech sounds in one language, and then a contrasting sound in the other language occurred occasionally. (Credit: University of Texas at San Antonio)
U. WASHINGTON (US) — Learning a second language is second nature to babies, but new research finds the ability may begin to fade as early as the first birthday.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
Scientists say a new study published in the Journal of Phonetics that investigates the brain mechanisms contributing to infants’ prowess at learning languages could boost bilingualism in adults as well.
“The bilingual brain is fascinating because it reflects humans’ abilities for flexible thinking—bilingual babies learn that objects and events in the world have two names, and flexibly switch between these labels, giving the brain lots of good exercise,” says study co-author Patricia Kuhl, professor of speech and hearing sciences and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.
Brains of babies raised in bilingual households show a longer period of being flexible to different languages, especially if they hear a lot of language at home. Also, the relative amount of each language babies are exposed to affects their vocabulary as toddlers.
Kuhl’s previous studies show that between 8 and 10 months of age, monolingual babies become increasingly able to distinguish speech sounds of their native language, while at the same time their ability to distinguish sounds from a foreign language declines.
For instance, between 8 and 10 months of age babies exposed to English become better at detecting the difference between “r” and “l” sounds, which are prevalent in the English language. This is the same age when Japanese babies, who are not exposed to as many “r” and “l” sounds, decline in their ability to detect them.
In the current study, babies from monolingual (English or Spanish) and bilingual (English and Spanish) households wore caps fitted with electrodes to measure brain activity with an electroencephalogram, or EEG, a device that records the flow of energy in the brain. Babies heard background speech sounds in one language, and then a contrasting sound in the other language occurred occasionally.
For example, a sound that is used in both Spanish and English served as the background sound and then a Spanish “da” and an English “ta” each randomly occurred 10 percent of the time as contrasting sounds. If the brain can detect the contrasting sound, there is a signature pattern called the mismatch response that can be detected with the EEG.
Monolingual babies at 6-9 months of age showed the mismatch response for both the Spanish and English contrasting sounds, indicating that they noticed the change in both languages. But at 10-12 months of age, monolingual babies only responded to the English contrasting sound.
Bilingual babies showed a different pattern. At 6-9 months, bilinguals did not show the mismatch response, but at 10-12 months they showed the mismatch for both sounds, suggesting that the bilingual brain remains flexible to languages for a longer period of time, possibly because bilingual infants are exposed to a greater variety of speech sounds at home.
To see if those brain responses at 10-12 months related to later speaking skills, the researchers followed up with the parents when the babies were about 15 months old to see how many Spanish and English words the children knew.
They found that early brain responses to language could predict infants’ word learning ability. That is, the size of the bilingual children’s vocabulary was associated with the strength of their brain responses in discriminating languages at 10-12 months of age.
Early exposure to language also made a difference: Bilingual babies exposed to more English at home, including from their parents, other relatives and family friends, subsequently produced more words in English. The pattern held true for Spanish.
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4 Comments
Rui
Yep Rui, I agree. It can and does degrade over time however early bilingualism opens up neural pathways that may end up becoming non functional but should you have pathways there that other monolingual kids will not have. That of course is not to say that they can’t be developed in later years…and they are without doubt.
The brain is an amazing mechanism that can be trained to do extraordinary things. We only use such a small percentage of our brain but unfortunately humans get stuck too easily in what they know, expect and believe.
Much more interesting research than this would be to explore if anyone can become talented in learning a second or subsequent language. The trouble is that there is such a string belief to the contrary by most people that this topic never even gets discussed.
If you are interested in this discussion..check out my website…
Mary
I spoke only English until I was five years old. At five, I had babysitters who spoke only German so I learned the sounds of German and how to ask for what I wanted. They read stories and sang to me in German for two years. Then I only infrequent opportunities to speak German again until I was 14 when I lived there again, began studying it in school, and frequently conversed with native Germans.. I think it was easier to learn in school because the sounds seemed natural to me whereas many of my classmates had difficulty. I eventually majored in it in college, but when I travel in Germany now, Germans can pinpoint the area of Germany where I lived when I was young based on my accent. Also, as a practice exercise in an education course in college, my fellow students and I had to teach one another a lesson. I could not, no matter how hard I tried to cooperate, pronounce French phrases correctly. Some of my fellow students could not correctly pronounce German. In fact, their mispronunciations (and mine, I feel sure) were so severe that I doubt we would have been understood by natives. My theory is that if you don’t produce certain sounds early in life, you cannot for physical reasons do it later. I know people who studied ballet or gymnastics when they were quite young who can perform certain physical feats that are impossible for me, even though I am otherwise physically fit.
Angel
It is a myth that we use only a small percentage of our brains. It would be evolutionarily inconceivable to devote resources to enlarging a brain that was not going to be used at maximum to give the animal a greater chance of survival. Just a point of order (Happy Face)
I disagree with this finding. The ability to distinguish among sounds associated with different languages does not automatically imply bilingualism. This ability can slowly degrade over time if the exposure is not sustained over a period of time. Similarly, from personal experience, I am very well able to differentiate and am basically fluent in English even though I was not exposed to the language until I was 10-years-old. Likewise, my earlier exposure to German as a 5-year-old is almost completely gone. Strangely, I now speak German with an American accent.