Bilingualism alters infants' cortical organization for attentional orienting mechanisms.

ABSTRACT: A bilingual environment is associated with changes in the brain's structure and function. Some suggest that bilingualism also improves higher-cognitive functions in infants as young as 6-months, yet whether this effect is associated with changes in the infant brain remains unknown. In the present study, we measured brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in monolingual- and bilingual-raised 6- and 10-month-old infants. Infants completed an orienting attention task, in which a cue was presented prior to an object appearing on the same (Valid) or opposite (Invalid) side of a display. Task performance did not differ between the groups but neural activity did. At 6-months, both groups showed greater activity for Valid (> Invalid) trials in frontal regions (left hemisphere fo

SUBMITTER: Arredondo MM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11225098 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature