Age and amount of exposure to a foreign language during childhood: Behavioral and ERP data on the semantic comprehension of spoken English by Japanese children

Neuroscience Research

Volumn 70, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 197-205

  Ojima, Shiro ^a,c,d   Matsuba Kurita, Hiroko ^c   Nakamura, Naoko ^a   Hoshino, Takahiro ^b,c   Hagiwara, Hiroko ^a,c  

^a TOKYO METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY   (Japan)

^b NAGOYA UNIVERSITY   (Japan)

^c JAPAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AGENCY   (Japan)

^d KEIO UNIVERSITY   (Japan)

Author keywords

Age; Children; English; Event related potentials; Foreign language learning; Japanese; N400

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH; CONTROLLED STUDY; ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURE; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; LANGUAGE PROCESSING; LEARNING; MALE; MULTIPLE REGRESSION; NEUROIMAGING; NORMAL HUMAN; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SPEECH THERAPY; VERBAL COMMUNICATION;

ASIAN CONTINENTAL ANCESTRY GROUP; CHILD; COMPREHENSION; ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY; EVOKED POTENTIALS; FEMALE; HUMANS; JAPAN; LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; LANGUAGE TESTS; LONGITUDINAL STUDIES; MALE; MULTILINGUALISM; SEMANTICS; SPEECH PERCEPTION;

EID: 79955644632     PISSN: 01680102     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.neures.2011.01.018     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Brown C., Hagoort P. The processing nature of the N400: evidence from masked priming. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 1993, 5:34-44.
2. Byrne J.M., Connolly J.F., MacLean S., Dooley J.M., Gordon K.E., Beattie T.L. Brain activity and language assessment using event-related potentials: development of a clinical protocol. Dev. Med. Child Neurol. 1999, 41:740-747.
3. Byrne J.M., Dywan C.A., Connolly J.F. An innovative method to assess the receptive vocabulary of children with cerebral-palsy using event-related brain potentials. J. Clin. Exp. Neuropsychol. 1995, 17:9-19.
4. Carroll J.B. Foreign language proficiency levels attained by language majors near graduation from college. Foreign Lang. Ann. 1967, 1:131-151.
5. Clark, E.V., 2003. Critical periods, time, and practice. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 9, pp. 39-48.
6. Connor C.M., Hieber S., Arts H.A., Zwolan T.A. Speech, vocabulary, and the education of children using cochlear implants: oral or total communication?. J. Speech. Lang. Hear. Res. 2000, 43:1185-1204.
7. DeKeyser R.M. The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition. Stud. Second Lang. Acquis. 2000, 22:499-533.
8. Diggle P.J., Heagerty P., Liang K.-Y., Zeger S.L. Analysis of Longitudinal Data 2004, Oxford University Press, Oxford. 2nd edition.
9. Emmorey K., Corina D. Lexical recognition in sign language: effects of phonetic structure and morphology. Percept. Mot. Skills 1990, 71:1227-1252.
10. Foreign Service Institute, 1973. Expected levels of absolute speaking proficiency in languages taught at the Foreign Service Institute. Foreign Service Institute, Arlington, VA.
11. Friederici A.D. Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2002, 6:78-84.
12. Friedrich M., Friederici A.D. N400-like semantic incongruity effect in 19-month-olds: processing known words in picture contexts. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2004, 16:1465-1477.
13. Gass S., Selinker L. Language Transfer in Language Learning 1994, Newbury House, Rowley, MA.
14. Goto H. Auditory perception by normal Japanese adults of the sounds "L" And "R" Neuropsychologia 1971, 9:317-323.
15. Hahne A., Eckstein K., Friederici A.D. Brain signatures of syntactic and semantic processes during children's language development. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2004, 16:1302-1318.
16. Holcomb P.J., Coffey S.A., Neville H.J. Visual and auditory sentence processing: a developmental analysis using event-related brain potentials. Dev. Neuropsychol. 1992, 8:203-241.
17. Johnson J.S., Newport E.L. Critical period effects in second language learning: the influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cogn. Psychol. 1989, 21:60-99.
18. Kuhl P. Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code. Nat. Rev. Neurosci. 2004, 5:831-843.
19. Kutas M., Federmeier K.D. Electrophysiology reveals semantic memory use in language comprehension. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2000, 4:463-470.
20. Kutas M., Hillyard S.A. Reading senseless sentences: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science 1980, 207:203-205.
21. Little R.J.A., Rubin D.B. Statistical Analysis with Missing Data 2002, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.
22. Mayberry R.I. The importance of childhood to language acquisition: Insights from American sign language. The Development of Speech Perception: The Transition from Speech Sounds to Spoken Words 1994, 57-90. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. J.C. Goodman, H.C. Nusbaum (Eds.).
23. Mayberry R.I., Fischer S.D. Looking through phonological shape to lexical meaning: the bottleneck of non-native sign language processing. Mem. Cogn. 1989, 17:740-754.
24. McLaughlin J., Osterhout L., Kim A. Neural correlates of second-language word learning: minimal instruction produces rapid change. Nat. Neurosci. 2004, 7:703-704.
25. Muñoz C. Age and the Rate of Foreign Language Learning 2006, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.
26. Newport E.L., Bavelier D., Neville H.J. Critical thinking about critical periods: perspectives on a critical period for language acquisition. Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development: Essays in Honor of Jacques Mehler 2001, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. E. Dupoux (Ed.).
27. Ojima S., Nakamura N., Matsuba-Kurita H., Hoshino T., Hagiwara H. Neural correlates of foreign-language learning in childhood: a 3-year longitudinal ERP study. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2011, 23:183-199.
28. Ojima S., Nakata H., Kakigi R. An ERP study of second language learning after childhood: effects of proficiency. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2005, 17:1212-1228.
29. Oldfield R.C. Assessment and analysis of handedness: the Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia 1971, 9:97-113.
30. Oyama S. A sensitive period for the acquisition of a nonnative phonological system. J. Psycholinguist. Res. 1976, 5:261-283.
31. Rossi S., Gugler M.F., Friederici A.D., Hahne A. The impact of proficiency on syntactic second-language processing of German and Italian: evidence from event-related potentials. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2006, 18:2030-2048.
32. Rugg M.D., Coles M.G.H. Electrophysiology of Mind: Event-Related Brain Potentials and Cognition 1995, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
33. Silva-Pereyra J., Rivera-Gaxiola M., Kuhl P.K. An event-related brain potential study of sentence comprehension in preschoolers: semantic and morphosyntactic processing. Brain Res. Cogn. Brain Res. 2005, 23:247-258.
34. Singleton D. Language Acquisition: The Age Factor 1989, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.
35. Snow C., Hoefnagel-Hohle M. The critical age for language acquisition: evidence from second language learning. Child Dev. 1978, 49:1114-1128.
36. Steinhauer K., White E.J., Drury J.E. Temporal dynamics of late second language acquisition: evidence from event-related brain potentials. Second Lang. Res. 2009, 25:13-41.
37. Tahta S., Wood M., Loewenthal K. Age changes in the ability to replicate foreign pronunciation and intonation. Lang. Speech 1981, 24:363-372.
38. van den Brink D., Brown C.M., Hagoort P. Electrophysiological evidence for early contextual influences during spoken-word recognition: N200 versus N400 effects. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2001, 13:967-985.
39. Weber-Fox C.M., Neville H.J. Maturational constraints on functional specializations for language processing: ERP and behavioral evidence in bilingual speakers. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 1996, 8:231-256.
40. Yamada J., Takatsuka S., Kotabe N., Kurusu J. On the optimum age for teaching foreign vocabulary to children. Int. Rev. Appl. Ling. 1980, 28:245-247.
41. Zar J.H. Biostatistical Analysis 1999, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. 4th edition.