Nicole Aquino
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Ioulia Kovelman
Co-Presenter: Holmes, Joi
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Psychology and CHGD / LSA
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Oral5
Session: Session 2 – 11am – 11:50am
Room: Breakout Room 6
Authors: Nicole Aquino, Joi Holmes, Nia Nickerson, Dr. Ioulia Kovelman
Presenter: 3
Abstract
Reading is an essential skill for children to develop that helps in their future academic and life success. This skill may be impacted by a variety of factors with language that are experienced through growth such as exposure to multiple languages or different forms of a language. School-aged African-American children commonly have this experience with bi-dialectilism and have been shown to exhibit weaker growth in reading and writing skills over time (Puranik et al., 2020). African American English, AAE, is a form of American English that young African-American children are exposed to in the home setting. Meanwhile, Mainstream American English, MAE, is another form of the English language that these children are introduced to in a school setting. In general, this exposure to MAE influences young bidialectal African-American children to decrease their use of AAE over time while expanding their language and literacy skills (Washington et al., 2018). In this research, we seek to understand how these developmental language experiences affect neural activation and organization in young bi-dialectal African-American children. Three groups of school-aged children were tested: AAE bi-dialectals, MAE monolinguals, and Spanish-English bilinguals (n=36). They completed several behavioral assessments including CTOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing), LWID (Letter-Word Identification), and PPVT (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test), meant to assess language and literacy skills. These children also completed a phonological awareness task during fNIRS (functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy) neuroimaging. Results within all three groups revealed activation in left temporal and frontal regions. However, varying language experiences did seem to differently affect regions of brain activation. Bilingual children displayed stronger right hemisphere activation. Monolinguals showed stronger occipital activation. Meanwhile, bi-dialectal children showed stronger bilateral temporal activation. These results provide a better understanding of how unique language experiences not only influence brain function and anatomy, but also expand a child’s growth in linguistic development.
Biomedical Sciences, Interdisciplinary, Social Sciences
