December 14, 2015 at 18:48The first language determines the linguistic abilities of a person
If up to three years you spoke Chinese, and then moved to France and began to communicate exclusively in French, then you could forget the first language. But not your brain. Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University found that the work of neurons in the brain involved in speech processing depends on the very first language a child learns. There is no visual information about the influence of Russian and other languages yet.
In this image, green indicates the area that French-speaking use in speech processing. Children who speak Chinese and French engage in areas highlighted in red. The activity of children who left China before the age of three and since then have not used their native language is marked in blue.
Researchers interviewed three groups of children aged ten to seventeen with different linguistic backgrounds. In the first group there were children who were born and raised in France, their families spoke French, and they themselves used only this language. The second group included children from China, adopted by French parents, who stopped speaking Chinese as a child. Children from the third group could speak and understand both languages.
Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to find out how a child’s brain responds to meaningless words.
In the first group, children involved the frontal gyrus and islet lobe. In the other two groups, the middle frontal gyrus was active, the left prefrontal cortex was the temporal gyrus.
Scientists have found that in children who have stopped speaking Chinese from an early age and began to use only French, the brain works in a similar way with those children who speak two languages.
The author of the study, Lara Pierce: “During the first year of life, as the first step to the development of the language, the brain of infants is configured to collect and store information about sounds that are relevant and important to the language they hear.” The study showed that Chinese children work with the French language differently than native French do.
Conclusions allow us to talk about the unique and lasting impact of early conversation experience for the further organization of the brain - the created patterns affect the language learning and the brain's ability to adapt to new conditions. The next step for scientists can be an experiment that will reveal how much brain activity will change in children with closer languages than Chinese and French - for example, French and Spanish.
Speaking about the influence of early experience in his book “It's Three Too Late,” Masaru Ibuka (one of the founders of Sony Corporation), told the story of a young man who went to work abroad, and sent his wife and newborn girl to her parents in Tohoku - region East Japan. Grandfather and grandmother played a lot and talked with the child before the baby started talking. When the girl spoke in Tokyo, she began to use words in the Tohoku dialect, although all family members spoke common Japanese. The girl could not get rid of the accent even at school.
The dialect spread through the brain channels of the child before the child began to speak. A study by the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University at the moment confirms the importance of the influence of language on the brain at an early age.
In this image, green indicates the area that French-speaking use in speech processing. Children who speak Chinese and French engage in areas highlighted in red. The activity of children who left China before the age of three and since then have not used their native language is marked in blue.
Meaningless words for testing brain functions
Researchers interviewed three groups of children aged ten to seventeen with different linguistic backgrounds. In the first group there were children who were born and raised in France, their families spoke French, and they themselves used only this language. The second group included children from China, adopted by French parents, who stopped speaking Chinese as a child. Children from the third group could speak and understand both languages.
Researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging to find out how a child’s brain responds to meaningless words.
In the first group, children involved the frontal gyrus and islet lobe. In the other two groups, the middle frontal gyrus was active, the left prefrontal cortex was the temporal gyrus.
The sounds of speech leave a mark in the brain
Scientists have found that in children who have stopped speaking Chinese from an early age and began to use only French, the brain works in a similar way with those children who speak two languages.
The author of the study, Lara Pierce: “During the first year of life, as the first step to the development of the language, the brain of infants is configured to collect and store information about sounds that are relevant and important to the language they hear.” The study showed that Chinese children work with the French language differently than native French do.
Conclusions allow us to talk about the unique and lasting impact of early conversation experience for the further organization of the brain - the created patterns affect the language learning and the brain's ability to adapt to new conditions. The next step for scientists can be an experiment that will reveal how much brain activity will change in children with closer languages than Chinese and French - for example, French and Spanish.
The influence of early experience
Speaking about the influence of early experience in his book “It's Three Too Late,” Masaru Ibuka (one of the founders of Sony Corporation), told the story of a young man who went to work abroad, and sent his wife and newborn girl to her parents in Tohoku - region East Japan. Grandfather and grandmother played a lot and talked with the child before the baby started talking. When the girl spoke in Tokyo, she began to use words in the Tohoku dialect, although all family members spoke common Japanese. The girl could not get rid of the accent even at school.
The dialect spread through the brain channels of the child before the child began to speak. A study by the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University at the moment confirms the importance of the influence of language on the brain at an early age.