However this view has also been challenged, with a number of reports either not finding evidence for enhanced performance in bilinguals 20, 21, 22 or arguing that they can be accounted for by variables other than bilingual experience 23, 24. One widely held view is that the increased processing demands arising from bilingual language use lead to enhanced capacity for selective attention, resulting in better performance for bilingual children on selective attention tasks 18, 19. Yet, the nature of these adaptive changes is still not entirely clear. Importantly, effects of bilingualism on aspects of neurocognitive processing have been observed from very early on, with data showing differences between monolingual and bilingual infants as young as 4–6 months old 14, 15 as well as in older children 16, 17. Our neurocognitive system accommodates these additional processing demands by modifying and adapting the underlying neural and functional architecture, as evidenced by a large number of studies in both children and adults 11, 12, 13. Learning and using multiple languages is a major processing demand for the cognitive system, with evidence showing that bilingual language use leads to parallel activation and competition between the two languages, requiring the users to selectively prioritise one and inhibit the other 8, 9, 10. One of the factors that has been linked to modification of selective attention in children is bilingualism. In fact, selective attention is proposed to be one of the key foundational skills for academic success in children overall 6, 7. This reflects the findings that selective attention is not only linked to inhibitory control 1 and working memory 2, but associated with the development of a variety of skills including speech 3, metalinguistic skills 4 and arithmetic 5. The maturation of selective attention is arguably one of the key developmental processes, with even subtle modifications to this process potentially leading to significant consequences. Despite equivalent behavioral performance, monolingual and bilingual children encoded attended speech differently, with the pattern of encoding across conditions in bilinguals suggesting a redistribution of the available attentional capacity, rather than its enhancement. We used EEG to capture the neural encoding of attended and unattended speech envelopes, and assess how well they can be reconstructed from the responses of the neuronal populations that encode them. Monolingual and bilingual children aged 7–12 attended to a narrative presented in one ear, while ignoring different types of interference in the other ear. Specifically, we asked whether the need for constant management of competing languages in bilinguals increases attentional capacity, or draws on the available resources such that they need to be economised to support optimal task performance. The current study investigated the mechanisms that drive this modification. This study adds to the growing body of literature supporting the superior supra-threshold auditory processing abilities among bilingual and multilingual individuals.Īuditory processing bilingual children multilingual children.There is substantial evidence that learning and using multiple languages modulates selective attention in children. Conclusion: This finding suggests that knowledge of multiple languages improves supra-threshold auditory processing abilities. The results further showed that, the supra-threshold auditory processing of multilingual children was better than bilingual children. Results: Results showed superior supra-threshold auditory processing abilities among multilingual and bilingual children than monolingual children. Amplitude modulation detection threshold, gap detection threshold, pitch discrimination threshold and spectral ripple discrimination threshold were measured. Study sample: Ninety children participated in the study, based on the number of languages they know children were assigned into three groups, i.e. Objective: This study examined the effects of bilingualism and multilingualism on supra-threshold auditory processing abilities in children.
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