TY - JOUR
T1 - Age of acquisition modulates neural activity for both regular and irregular syntactic functions
AU - Hernandez, Arturo E.
AU - Hofmann, Juliane
AU - Kotz, Sonja A.
N1 - R03 HD050313-01A1, NICHD NIH HHS, United StatesR03 HD050313-02, NICHD NIH HHS, United StatesR03HD050313-01, NICHD NIH HHS, United States
PY - 2007/7/1
Y1 - 2007/7/1
N2 - Studies have found that neural activity is greater for irregular grammatical items than regular items. Findings with monolingual Spanish speakers have revealed a similar effect when making gender decisions for visually presented nouns. The current study extended previous studies by looking at the role of regularity in modulating differences in groups that differ in the age of acquisition of a language. Early and late learners of Spanish matched on measures of language proficiency were asked to make gender decisions to regular (-o for masculine and -a for feminine) and irregular items (which can end in e, l, n, r, s, t and z). Results revealed increased activity in left BA 44 for irregular compared to regular items in separate comparisons for both early and late learners. In addition, within-group comparisons revealed that neural activity for irregulars extended into left BA 47 for late learners and into left BA 6 for early learners. Direct comparisons between groups revealed increased activity in left BA 44/45 for irregular items indicating the need for more extensive syntactic processing in late learners. The results revealed that processing of irregular grammatical gender leads to increased activity in left BA 44 and adjacent areas in the left IFG regardless of when a language is learned. Furthermore, these findings suggest differential recruitment of brain areas associated with grammatical processing in late learners. The results are discussed with regard to a model which considers L2 learning as emerging from the competitive interplay between two languages. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
AB - Studies have found that neural activity is greater for irregular grammatical items than regular items. Findings with monolingual Spanish speakers have revealed a similar effect when making gender decisions for visually presented nouns. The current study extended previous studies by looking at the role of regularity in modulating differences in groups that differ in the age of acquisition of a language. Early and late learners of Spanish matched on measures of language proficiency were asked to make gender decisions to regular (-o for masculine and -a for feminine) and irregular items (which can end in e, l, n, r, s, t and z). Results revealed increased activity in left BA 44 for irregular compared to regular items in separate comparisons for both early and late learners. In addition, within-group comparisons revealed that neural activity for irregulars extended into left BA 47 for late learners and into left BA 6 for early learners. Direct comparisons between groups revealed increased activity in left BA 44/45 for irregular items indicating the need for more extensive syntactic processing in late learners. The results revealed that processing of irregular grammatical gender leads to increased activity in left BA 44 and adjacent areas in the left IFG regardless of when a language is learned. Furthermore, these findings suggest differential recruitment of brain areas associated with grammatical processing in late learners. The results are discussed with regard to a model which considers L2 learning as emerging from the competitive interplay between two languages. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
U2 - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.02.055
DO - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.02.055
M3 - Article
C2 - 17490895
SN - 1053-8119
VL - 36
SP - 912
EP - 923
JO - NeuroImage
JF - NeuroImage
IS - 3
ER -