The Bilingual Brain
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Many researchers have sought to understand whether brains of bilingual children differ from those of monolingual children, and if so, in what ways. Lydia Kokkola, a professor of English and Education at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, explored this issue in her article “Reading Multilingual Literature: The Bilingual Brain and Literacy Education.”
Kokkola notes that a newborn infant’s brain is plastic, capable of molding itself as the infant grows and encounters novel persons and objects. She writes, “the brain of infants is particularly attuned to identifying patterns in the language and language use.” So from an early age, babies’ brains work to process speech, despite the fact that they aren’t able to comprehend the content of what’s being said.
For monolingual children, language functions become localized in the left hemisphere of the brain at around 36 months of age. Interestingly, the opposite is true of bi- and multilingual children: more of the language functions are placed in the right hemisphere of their brains. According to Kokkola, the right hemisphere is where emotions and visual stimuli are processed (pg. 29). She also writes, “the best learning results are achieved when both sides of the brain collaborate.”
These discoveries about bilingual brains have significant implications for literacy education. For one, bilingual children are exposed to a greater number of phonemes than monolingual children, and they often need help in differentiating between which phonemes correspond to which language. In addition, bilingual children usually have smaller vocabularies than monolingual children from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. One way in which to build the vocabularies of bilingual children is through the use of dual-language storybooks, which also make efficient use of the way the children’s brains are formed.
Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist, points out that in terms of brain development, the earlier children become bilingual, the better. In her book Proust and the Squid, Wolf reports on a study conducted by fellow neuroscientist Laura-Ann Petitto of Dartmouth University. Wolf writes, “[Petitto] and her colleagues found that early bilingual exposure (before age three) had a positive effect, with language and reading comparable to those of monolinguals” (pg. 106). Additionally, in a series of imaging studies, Petitto discovered the brains of adults who were early bilinguals processed both languages in overlapping regions. This finding seems to support Kokkola's above, and according to Wolf, suggests a bilingual brain has “certain cognitive advantages over a monolingual brain in terms of linguistic flexibility and multitasking” (pg. 107).
Kokkola notes that a newborn infant’s brain is plastic, capable of molding itself as the infant grows and encounters novel persons and objects. She writes, “the brain of infants is particularly attuned to identifying patterns in the language and language use.” So from an early age, babies’ brains work to process speech, despite the fact that they aren’t able to comprehend the content of what’s being said.
For monolingual children, language functions become localized in the left hemisphere of the brain at around 36 months of age. Interestingly, the opposite is true of bi- and multilingual children: more of the language functions are placed in the right hemisphere of their brains. According to Kokkola, the right hemisphere is where emotions and visual stimuli are processed (pg. 29). She also writes, “the best learning results are achieved when both sides of the brain collaborate.”
These discoveries about bilingual brains have significant implications for literacy education. For one, bilingual children are exposed to a greater number of phonemes than monolingual children, and they often need help in differentiating between which phonemes correspond to which language. In addition, bilingual children usually have smaller vocabularies than monolingual children from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. One way in which to build the vocabularies of bilingual children is through the use of dual-language storybooks, which also make efficient use of the way the children’s brains are formed.
Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist, points out that in terms of brain development, the earlier children become bilingual, the better. In her book Proust and the Squid, Wolf reports on a study conducted by fellow neuroscientist Laura-Ann Petitto of Dartmouth University. Wolf writes, “[Petitto] and her colleagues found that early bilingual exposure (before age three) had a positive effect, with language and reading comparable to those of monolinguals” (pg. 106). Additionally, in a series of imaging studies, Petitto discovered the brains of adults who were early bilinguals processed both languages in overlapping regions. This finding seems to support Kokkola's above, and according to Wolf, suggests a bilingual brain has “certain cognitive advantages over a monolingual brain in terms of linguistic flexibility and multitasking” (pg. 107).
Sources:
- Kokkola, Lydia. “Reading Multilingual Literature: The Bilingual Brain and Literacy Education.” Bookbird: A Journal of International Children’s Literature 51.3 (2013): 22-35.
- Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.