Esli Struys

DTI reveals structural differences in white matter tracts between bilingual and monolingual children.

The impact of bilingualism on the microstructure of the white matter pathways related to language processing is assessed in elementary school children by magnetic resonance diffusion tensor imaging (MR-DTI). Forty children, 8-11 years old, subdivided into 3 different groups (15 simultaneous bilinguals, 15 sequential bilinguals and 10 monolinguals), were scanned. The hypothesis was that the starting age and the manner of second language acquisition would affect the characteristics of language circuitry. In each subject the mean fractional anisotropy (FA) was obtained for four major white matter pathways: 1 - the left arcuate fasciculus/superior longitudinal fasciculus (lAF/lSLF) that connects Brocas area in the opercular and triangular regions of the left inferior frontal gyrus to the posterior language zone, 2 - the left inferior occipitofrontal fasciculus (lIFOF), connecting anterior regions in the frontal lobe with posterior regions in the temporal occipital lobes, 3 - the bundle arising from the anterior part of the corpus callosum projecting to the orbital lobe (AC-OL) and 4 - the fibers emerging from the anterior midbody (AMB) of the corpus callosum that associate with the premotor and supplementary motor cortices (AMB-PMC). The three groups did not show significant differences in mean FA over the lAF/lSLF or AMB-PMC tracts. In simultaneous bilingual subjects the lIFOF tracts had higher mean FA value compared to monolinguals and also sequential bilinguals, whereas the comparison for the AC-OL fibers yielded a significantly lower mean FA value in simultaneous bilingual subjects compared to monolinguals. In both cases the FA value for sequential bilinguals was intermediate to that of the other two groups. To our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence of bilingualism related adaptation of white matter microstructure in the human brain.

Age of second language acquisition affects nonverbal conflict processing in children: an fMRI study.

In their daily communication, bilinguals switch between two languages, a process that involves the selection of a target language and minimization of interference from a nontarget language. Previous studies have uncovered the neural structure in bilinguals and the activation patterns associated with performing verbal conflict tasks. One question that remains, however is whether this extra verbal switching affects brain function during nonverbal conflict tasks.

Schizophrenia and depression: The relation between sleep quality and working memory

Sleep is known to be markedly disturbed in patients with depression, but in patients with schizophrenia these problems are underestimated. This research aimed to determine if a relationship existed between sleep problems in patients with schizophrenia and with depression and their reduced working memory (WM) performance. Thirty outpatients with schizophrenia, 30 outpatients with depression, and 30 healthy control participants were enrolled in this study. All participants completed a sleep questionnaire (i.e., Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI)), two simple WM tasks tapping only its storage component (i.e., digit span forward and backward task), and two complex WM tasks tapping both its storage and processing components (i.e., letter-number sequencing and reading span task). The results showed that neither psychiatric group differed from the healthy controls on simple WM tasks. Patients with schizophrenia did not differ from those with depression in the performance of simple or complex WM tasks. However, patients with schizophrenia, and, to a lesser degree, patients with depression performed significantly worse than the healthy control participants on complex WM tasks, which was visible in lower WM scores for patients with depression and in slower information processing, as well, for patients with schizophrenia. Finally, a significant negative relationship was found between the PSQI score and the reading span task scores; thus, participants with worse performance tended to report more sleep problems. To conclude, sleep needs to receive more priority when treating patients with depression and especially patients with schizophrenia because better sleep improves (working) memory performance and daily functioning.

The Role of Cognitive Development and Strategic Task Tendencies in the Bilingual Advantage Controversy

Recent meta-analyses have indicated that the bilingual advantage in cognitive control is not clear-cut. So far, the literature has mainly focussed on behavioral differences and potential differences in strategic task tendencies between monolinguals and bilinguals have been left unexplored. In the present study, two groups of younger and older bilingual Dutch–French children were compared to monolingual controls on a Simon and flanker task. Beside the classical between-group comparison, we also investigated potential differences in strategy choices as indexed by the speed-accuracy trade-off. Whereas we did not find any evidence for an advantage for bilingual over monolingual children, only the bilinguals showed a significant speed-accuracy trade-off across tasks and age groups. Furthermore, in the younger bilingual group, the trade-off effect was only found in the Simon and not the flanker task. These findings suggest that differences in strategy choices can mask variations in performance between bilinguals and monolinguals, and therefore also provide inconsistent findings on the bilingual cognitive control advantage.

CLIL, languages of schooling and the role of implicit learning with special reference to the learning of mathematics

Content and Language Integrated Learning became very popular in Europe in a relatively short period of time. Since the acronym was coined in the mid-nineties hundreds of schools have adopted the approach whereby in primary and secondary schools content is taught via the medium of a foreign or second language. This does not mean that in a particular country all schools are involved. More often than not it is only part of the education system that uses the CLIL approach (Eurydice, 2017). Yet, the following question seems more than legitimate. Why is it that in a fairly conservative field such as education the CLIL approach has gained so much momentum in such a short period of time? In this contribution we will try to give answers that are normally discarded from the CLIL debate. Of course, we know that the success of CLIL is due to a better mastery of the target language (see for instance Dalton-Puffer, 2008, Linares et al., 2012) and also to better cognitive development (see for instance Jäppinen, 2005, author a, 2007 a, Lorenzo et al., 2010) but despite CLIL’s success and popularity one of the most frequently heard complaints by researchers is about the lack of empirical, statistically relevant, longitudinal studies (see for instance Pérez-Cañado, 2012).