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Purpose: The fine-tuning of linguistic prosody in later childhood is poorly understood, and its neurological processing is even less well studied. In particular, it is unknown if grammatical processing of prosody is left- or rightlateralized in childhood versus adulthood and how phonological working memory might modulate such lateralization. Furthermore, it is virtually unknown how prosody develops neurologically among children with cochlear implants (CIs). Method: Normal-hearing (NH) children ages 6-12 years and NH adults ages 18-28 years completed a functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging task, during which they heard sentence pairs and judged whether the sentences did or did not differ in their overall prosody (declarative, question, with or without narrow focus). Children also completed standard measures of expressive and receptive language. Results: Age group differences emerged; children exhibited stronger bilateral temporoparietal activity but reduced left frontal activation. Furthermore, children's performance on a nonword repetition test was significantly associated with activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus--an area that was generally more activated in adults than in children. Conclusions: The prosody-related findings are generally consistent with prior neurodevelopmental works on sentence comprehension, especially those involving syntax and semantics, which have also noted a developmental shift from bilateral temporal to left inferior frontal regions typically associated with increased sensitivity to sentence structure. The findings thus inform theoretical perspectives on brain and language development and have implications for studying the effects of CIs on neurodevelopmental processes for sentence prosody

Children who speak one language at home and a different language at school may be at higher risk of falling behind in their academic achievement when schooling is disrupted. The present study examined the effects of COVID-19-related school disruptions on English language and literacy development among monolingual and bilingual children in the US. All children attended English-only schools that implemented varied forms of virtual and hybrid schooling during the pandemic. Pre-COVID-19 and during-COVID-19 examinations were conducted with 237 children (M(SD)[subscript age] = 7.78 (1.54) at Time 1) from relatively high SES homes, including 95 monolinguals, 75 Spanish-English and 67 Chinese-English bilinguals. The findings revealed different impacts of COVID-19 school disruptions on the present bilingual and monolingual participants. Specifically, between Time 1 and Time 2, monolingual children made age-appropriate improvements in all literacy measurements. Relative to monolinguals, both bilingual groups showed greater gains in vocabulary but lower gains in reading comprehension. Moreover, across groups, children's independent reading practices during COVID-19 were positively associated with children's literacy growth during the pandemic-related schooling disruptions. Taken together, these findings inform theoretical perspectives on learning to read in linguistically diverse children experiencing COVID-19-related schooling disruptions.

How do early bilingual experiences influence children's neural architecture for word processing? Dual language acquisition can yield common influences that may be shared across different bilingual groups, as well as language-specific influences stemming from a given language pairing. To investigate these effects, we examined bilingual English speakers of Chinese or Spanish, and English monolinguals, all raised in the US (N = 152, ages 5-10). Children completed an English morphological word processing task during fNIRS neuroimaging. The findings revealed both language-specific and shared bilingual effects. The language-specific effects were that Chinese and Spanish bilinguals showed principled differences in their neural organization for English lexical morphology. The common bilingual effects shared by the two groups were that in both bilingual groups, increased home language proficiency was associated with stronger left superior temporal gyrus (STG) activation when processing the English word structures that are most dissimilar from the home language. The findings inform theories of language and brain development during the key periods of neural reorganization for learning to read by illuminating experience-based plasticity in linguistically diverse learners.

Morphological awareness, or sensitivity to units of meaning, is an essential component of reading comprehension development. Current neurobiological models of reading and dyslexia have largely been built upon phonological processing models, yet reading for meaning is as essential as reading for sound. To fill this gap, the present study explores the relation between children's neural organization for morphological awareness and successful reading comprehension in typically developing and impaired readers. English-speaking children ages 6-11 (N = 97; mean age = 8.6 years, 25% reading impaired) completed standard literacy assessments as well as an auditory morphological awareness task during functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging, which included root (e.g., PERSON + al) and derivational (e.g., quick + LY) morphology. Regression analyses revealed that children's morphological awareness predicted unique variance in reading comprehension above and beyond demographic factors, vocabulary knowledge, and decoding ability. Neuroimaging analyses further revealed that children with stronger reading comprehension showed greater engagement of brain regions associated with integrating sound and meaning, including left inferior frontal, middle temporal, and inferior parietal regions. This effect was especially notable for the derivational morphology condition that involved manipulating more analytically demanding and semantically abstract units (e.g., un-, -ly, -ion). Together, these findings suggest that successful reading comprehension, and its deficit in dyslexia, may be related to the ability to manipulate morpho-phonological units of word meaning and structure. These results inform theoretical perspectives on literacy and children's neural architecture for learning to read.

This study aimed to clarify the relations between morphological awareness and literacy skills in Spanish and English in young simultaneous bilingual learners. Guided by theoretical perspectives on the associations between morphological awareness and word- versus sentence-level literacy skills, and their transfer between bilinguals' two languages, we asked bilingual children (N = 90; M = 8.07 years old) to complete dual-language literacy assessments. First, we observed cross-linguistic differences in the associations between morphology and reading. In English, morphological awareness was directly related to word reading and reading comprehension, whereas in Spanish, the association with reading comprehension was fully mediated by vocabulary and single word reading. Second, we observed cross-linguistic associations from English word reading to Spanish reading comprehension, and from Spanish reading comprehension to English reading comprehension. Our findings inform bilingual literacy theory by revealing both cross-linguistic differences and bidirectional associations between literacy skills across typologically-distinct orthographies. In particular, children's word-level skills transferred from the language of schooling (English) into their heritage language (Spanish), and their broader reading comprehension skills transferred from the heritage language to support English. Taken together, these findings support the value of bilingual heritage language maintenance for reading achievement in children's dominant language of literacy instruction.

This study investigates the cross-linguistic transfer of literacy skills in Spanish-English, Chinese-English bilingual, and English monolingual children (N = 283, 5-10 years). Research question 1 examines English literacy and asks how phonological and morpho-semantic skills contribute to word reading as a function of children's language background. Structural equation modeling revealed contrasting bilingual effects: compared to English monolinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals relied more on phonological awareness in word reading, whereas Chinese-English bilinguals relied more on lexical knowledge. Research question 2 examines relations between bilinguals' heritage language proficiency and English literacy. Results revealed direct and indirect effects of heritage language meta-linguistic skills on English word reading. The study yields implications for reading theories and instructional practices in optimizing literacy in linguistically diverse children.

This study examines the influence of language environment on language and reading skills and the cross-linguistic contributions to reading outcomes in 132 Spanish-English bilingual children ages 7-12 (52% female; 98% Hispanic). We present three major findings: children's language knowledge is separable into general (e.g., phonological awareness) and language-specific (e.g., meaning, grammar) skills; regular Spanish use positively relates to children's Spanish language and reading skills and does not limit English skills; and Spanish reading comprehension is positively associated with English reading comprehension. The model explains a significant percentage of the variance in English (R[superscript 2] = 0.89) and Spanish (R[superscript 2] = 0.87) reading comprehension outcomes. Findings shed light on the interdependence of Spanish and English as they relate to bilingual reading acquisition.

The possibility and nature of bilingual advantage for theory of mind (ToM), that is, young bilingual children outperforming their monolingual peers, have been discussed increasingly since the first research on the topic was published in 2003. Because accumulating evidence demonstrates a ToM advantage for bilingual individuals, in this article, we focus on how this advantage arises. We consider how current theoretical positions, including "executive function," "metalinguistic awareness," and "sociolinguistic awareness" accounts, explain such an advantage in young bilingual children. These theoretical accounts receive some, but only partial, support, so further research and theory are needed to understand comprehensively the relationship between bilingualism and ToM.

Purpose: Child language acquisition is marked by an optional infinitive period (ages 2-4 years) during which children use nonfinite (infinitival) verb forms and finite verb forms interchangeably in grammatical contexts that require finite forms. In English, children's errors include omissions of past tense /--ed/ and 3rd-person singular /--s/. This language acquisition period typically ends by the age of 4 years, but it persists in children with language impairments. It is unknown if adults still process optional infinitives differently than other kinds of morphosyntax errors. Method: We compared behavior and functional brain activation during grammaticality judgments across sentences with developmental optional infinitive tense/agreement errors ("Yesterday I play the song"), nondevelopmental agreement errors ("He am tall") that do not occur in typical child language acquisition, and grammatically correct sentences. Results: Adults (N = 25) were significantly slower and less accurate in judging sentences with developmental errors relative to other sentences. Sentences with developmental errors yielded greater activation in bilateral inferior frontal gyri relative to nondevelopmental error sentences in both auditory and visual modalities. Conclusions: These findings suggest that the heightened computational demands for finiteness extend well beyond early childhood and continue to exert their influence on grammatical mental and brain function in adulthood.

The developmental process of reading acquisition is frequently conceptualized as a self-organizing mental network consisting of lexico-semantic, phonological and orthographical components. The developmental nature of this network varies across languages and is known to impact second-language learners of typologically different languages. Yet, it remains largely unknown whether such cross-linguistic differences interact within young bilingual learners of two typologically different languages. In the present study, we compared Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals (ages 6-12, N = 134) born and raised in the US on their English language and reading skills including vocabulary, phonological and morphological awareness, and word reading. We conducted whole group and subgroup analyses on younger participants to examine the extent of the effect. In monolinguals, phonological abilities directly predicted English word reading. In contrast, in bilinguals, both phonological and morphological abilities made an indirect contribution to English literacy via vocabulary knowledge, even though bilinguals had monolingual-like language and reading abilities in English. These findings offer new insights into the flexibility of the phonological and lexical pathways for learning to read.

Models of monolingual literacy propose that reading acquisition builds upon children's semantic, phonological, and orthographic knowledge. The relationships between these components vary cross-linguistically, yet it is generally unknown how these differences impact bilingual children's literacy. A comparison between Spanish-English bilingual and English monolingual children (ages 6-13, N = 70) from the US revealed that bilinguals had stronger associations between phonological and orthographic representations than monolinguals during English reading. While vocabulary was the strongest predictor of English word reading for both groups, phonology and morphosyntax were the best predictors of Spanish reading for bilinguals. This comparison reveals distinct developmental processes across learners and languages, and suggests that early and systematic biliteracy exposure at home and through afterschool programs can influence children's sound-to-print associations even in the context of language-specific (monolingual) reading instruction. These findings have important implications for bilingual education as well as theories that aim to explain how learning to read across languages has a positive impact on the acquisition of literacy.

Purpose: We examined the neurocognitive bases of lexical morphology in children of varied reading abilities to understand the role of meaning-based skills in learning to read with dyslexia. Method: Children completed auditory morphological and phonological awareness tasks during functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. We first examined the relation between lexical morphology and phonological processes in typically developing readers (Study 1, N = 66, Mage = 8.39), followed by a more focal inquiry into lexical morphology processes in dyslexia (Study 2, N = 50, Mage = 8.62). Results: Typical readers exhibited stronger engagement of language neurocircuitry during the morphology task relative to the phonology task, suggesting that morphological analyses involve synthesizing multiple components of sublexical processing. This effect was stronger for more analytically complex derivational affixes (like + ly) than more semantically transparent free base morphemes (snow + man). In contrast, children with dyslexia exhibited stronger activation during the free base condition relative to derivational affix condition. Taken together, the findings suggest that although children with dyslexia may struggle with derivational morphology, they may also use free base morphemes’ semantic information to boost word recognition. Conclusion: This study informs literacy theories by identifying an interaction between reading ability, word structure, and how the developing brain learns to recognize words in speech and print. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behaviorally, children's explicit theory of mind (ToM) proceeds in a progression of mental-state understandings: developmentally, children demonstrate accurate explicit desire-reasoning before accurate explicit belief-reasoning. Given its robust and cross-cultural nature, we hypothesize this progression may be paced in part by maturation/specialization of the brain. Neuroimaging research demonstrates that the right temporoparietal junction (TPJ) becomes increasingly selective for ToM reasoning as children age, and as their ToM improves. But this research has narrowly focused on beliefs or on undifferentiated mental-states. A recent ERP study in children included a critical contrast to desire-reasoning, and demonstrated that right posterior potentials differentiated belief-reasoning from desire-reasoning. Taken together, the literature suggests that children's desire-belief progression may be paced by specialization of the right TPJ for belief-reasoning specifically, beyond desire-reasoning. In the present study, we tested this hypothesis directly by examining children's belief- and desire-reasoning using functional near-infrared spectroscopy in conjunction with structural magnetic resonance imaging to pinpoint brain activation in the right TPJ. Results showed greatest activation in the right TPJ for belief-reasoning, beyond desire-reasoning, and beyond non-mental reasoning (control). Findings replicate and critically extend prior ERP results, and provide clear evidence for a specific neural mechanism underlying children's progression from understanding desires to understanding beliefs.

Can bilingual exposure impact children's neural circuitry for learning to read? To answer this question, we investigated the brain bases of morphological awareness, one of the key spoken language abilities for learning to read in English and Chinese. Bilingual Chinese-English and monolingual English children (N = 22, ages 7-12) completed morphological tasks that best characterize each of their languages: compound morphology in Chinese (e.g. basket + ball = basketball) and derivational morphology in English (e.g. re + do = redo). In contrast to monolinguals, bilinguals showed greater activation in the left middle temporal region, suggesting that bilingual exposure to Chinese impacts the functionality of brain regions supporting semantic abilities. Similar to monolinguals, bilinguals showed greater activation in the left inferior frontal region [BA 45] in English than Chinese, suggesting that young bilinguals form language-specific neural representations. The findings offer new insights to inform bilingual and cross-linguistic models of language and literacy acquisition.

Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to identify the brain bases of phonological working memory (the short-term maintenance of speech sounds) using behavioral tasks analogous to clinically sensitive assessments of nonword repetition. The secondary purpose of the study was to identify how individual differences in brain activation were related to participants' nonword repetition abilities. Method: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neurophysiological response during a nonword discrimination task derived from standard clinical assessments of phonological working memory. Healthy adult control participants (N = 16) discriminated pairs of real words or nonwords under varying phonological working memory load, which we manipulated by parametrically varying the number of syllables in target (non)words. Participants' cognitive and phonological abilities were also measured using standardized assessments. Results: Neurophysiological responses in bilateral superior temporal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and supplementary motor area increased with greater phonological working memory load. Activation in left superior temporal gyrus during nonword discrimination correlated with participants' performance on standard clinical nonword repetition tests. Conclusion: These results suggest that phonological working memory is related to the function of cortical structures that canonically underlie speech perception and production.

Bilingualism is a typical linguistic experience, yet relatively little is known about its impact on children's cognitive and brain development. Theories of bilingualism suggest that early dual-language acquisition can improve children's cognitive abilities, specifically those relying on frontal lobe functioning. While behavioral findings present much conflicting evidence, little is known about its effects on children's frontal lobe development. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the findings suggest that Spanish-English bilingual children (n = 13, ages 7-13) had greater activation in left prefrontal cortex during a non-verbal attentional control task relative to age-matched English monolinguals. In contrast, monolinguals (n = 14) showed greater right prefrontal activation than bilinguals. The present findings suggest that early bilingualism yields significant changes to the functional organization of children's prefrontal cortex for attentional control and carry implications for understanding how early life experiences impact cognition and brain development.

In teaching reading, educators strive to find the balance between a code-emphasis approach and a meaning-oriented literacy approach. However, little is known about how different approaches to literacy can benefit bilingual children's early reading acquisition. To investigate the novel hypothesis that children's age of first bilingual exposure can interact with different approaches to literacy, we tested 56 Spanish-English bilingual children (ages 7-9), with birth exposure to Spanish and either early (before age 3) or late (3-4) age of first bilingual exposure to English. The children attended reading programs identified with either phonics or whole language emphasis. Consistent with our hypothesis, differential outcomes were linked to different ages of first bilingual exposure. Early bilingual exposure to English was associated with more advanced reading abilities under whole language emphasis, while later (ages 3-4) exposure was associated with better decoding and reading abilities under phonics emphasis. The findings show that knowing the age of a child's first bilingual language exposure, as it corresponds to different periods in child development, may contribute to an educator's design of reading instruction that best accommodates young bilingual learners.

Over the course of literacy development, children learn to recognize word sounds and meanings in print. Yet, they do so differently across alphabetic and character‐based orthographies such as English and Chinese. To uncover cross‐linguistic influences on children's literacy, we asked young Chinese–English simultaneous bilinguals and English monolinguals (N = 119, ages 5–10) to complete phonological and morphological awareness (MA) literacy tasks. Children completed the tasks in the auditory modality in each of their languages during functional near‐infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging. Cross‐linguistically, comparisons between bilinguals' two languages revealed that the task that was more central to reading in a given orthography, such as phonological awareness (PA) in English and MA in Chinese, elicited less activation in the left inferior frontal and parietal regions. Group comparisons between bilinguals and monolinguals in English, their shared language of academic instruction, revealed that the left inferior frontal was less active during phonology but more active during morphology in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. MA skills are generally considered to have greater language specificity than PA skills. Bilingual literacy training in a skill that is maximally similar across languages, such as PA, may therefore yield greater automaticity for this skill, as reflected in the lower activation in bilinguals relative to monolinguals. This interpretation is supported by negative correlations between proficiency and brain activation. Together, these findings suggest that both the structural characteristics and literacy experiences with a given language can exert specific influences on bilingual and monolingual children's emerging brain networks for learning to read. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it best to learn reading in two languages simultaneously or sequentially? We observed second- and third-grade children in two-way "dual-language learning contexts": (a) 50:50 or Simultaneous dual-language (two languages within same developmental period) and (b) 90:10 or Sequential dual-language (one language, followed gradually by the other). They were compared to matched monolingual English-only children in single-language English schools. Bilinguals (home language was Spanish only, English-only, or Spanish and English in dual-language schools), were tested in both languages, and monolingual children were tested in English using standardized reading and language tasks. Bilinguals in 50:50 programs performed better than bilinguals in 90:10 programs on English Irregular Words and Passage Comprehension tasks, suggesting language and reading facilitation for "underlying grammatical class and linguistic structure" analyses. By contrast, bilinguals in 90:10 programs performed better than bilinguals in the 50:50 programs on English Phonological Awareness and Reading Decoding tasks, suggesting language and reading facilitation for surface "phonological regularity" analysis. Notably, children from English-only homes in dual-language learning contexts performed equally well, or better than, children from monolingual English-only homes in single-language learning contexts. Overall, the findings provide tantalizing evidence that dual-language learning during the same developmental period may provide "bilingual reading advantages". (Contains 2 tables and 3 figures.)

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine how the brains of individuals with cochlear implants (CIs) respond to spoken language tasks that underlie successful language acquisition and processing. Method: During functional near-infrared spectroscopy imaging, CI recipients with hearing impairment (n = 10, mean age: 52.7 ± 17.3 years) and controls with normal hearing (n = 10, mean age: 50.6 ± 17.2 years) completed auditory tasks--phonological awareness and passage comprehension--commonly used to investigate neurodevelopmental disorders of language and literacy. Results: The 2 groups had similar reaction time and performance on experimental tasks, although participants with CIs had lower accuracy than controls. Overall, both CI recipients and controls exhibited similar patterns of brain activation during the tasks. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that CI recipients show an overall neurotypical pattern of activation during auditory language tasks on which individuals with neurodevelopmental language learning impairments (e.g., dyslexia) tend to show atypical brain activation. These findings suggest that advancements in functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging with CI recipients may help shed new light on how varying types of difficulties in language processing affect brain organization for language., Human brain organization for language arises as the result of complex interaction between neurobiology and language experiences (Neville, 2005; Petitto et al., 2000). A comparison between healthy individuals with typical [...]