Piet Van de Craen

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.

White-matter development is different in bilingual and monolingual children: a longitudinal DTI study.

Although numerous people grow up speaking more than one language, the impact of bilingualism on brain developing neuroanatomy is still poorly understood. This study aimed to determine whether the changes in the mean fractional-anisotropy (MFA) of language pathways are different between bilingual and monolingual children. Simultaneous-bilinguals, sequential-bilinguals and monolingual, male and female 10–13 years old children participated in this longitudinal study over a period of two years. We used diffusion tensor tractography to obtain mean fractional-anisotropy values of four language related pathways and one control bundle: 1-left-inferior-occipitofrontal fasciculus/lIFOF, 2-left-arcuate fasciculus/lAF/lSLF, 3-bundle arising from the anterior part of corpus-callosum and projecting to orbital lobe/AC-OL, 4-fibres emerging from anterior-midbody of corpus-callosum (CC) to motor cortices/AMB-PMC, 5- right-inferior-occipitofrontal fasciculus rIFOF as the control pathway unrelated to language. These values and their rate of change were compared between 3 groups. FA-values did not change significantly over two years for lAF/lSLF and AC-OL. Sequential-bilinguals had the highest degree of change in the MFA value of lIFOF, and AMB-PMC did not present significant group differences. The comparison of MFA of lIFOF yielded a significantly higher FA-value in simultaneous bilinguals compared to monolinguals. These findings acknowledge the existing difference of the development of the semantic processing specific pathway between children with different semantic processing procedure. These also support the hypothesis that age of second language acquisition affects the maturation and myelination of some language specific white-matter pathways.

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.

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).

15. Emile dans tous ses états. pourquoi l’enseignement multilingue est un enseignement meilleur. Le rôle de l’apprentissage implicite

Ce chapitre montre que l’approche CLIL/EMILE (content and language integrated learning/enseignement d’une matiere integre a une langue etrangere) depasse le cadre strict de l’apprentissage des langues. Dans une premiere partie, le chapitre resume les effets linguistiques, psycho-sociaux, cognitifs et cerebraux. Trois aspects didactiques d’EMILE sont ensuite examines, a savoir le multilinguisme additif, le principe de repetition et le transfert des competences, attestant que cette approche possede des caracteristiques tout a fait particulieres et difficilement comparables a l’apprentissage traditionnel des langues. La prise en compte des resultats scolaires lies a l’influence du developpement cognitif renforce encore cette these. Le cas des mathematiques etudie ensuite est exemplaire en ce qu’il montre que les eleves issus de l’enseignement bilingue ont de meilleurs resultats que ceux de l’enseignement traditionnel. La troisieme partie presente le processus conduisant a ces resultats. Il est suggere que l’apprentissage implicite de la langue cible est responsable des bons scores realises dans les tests de mathematiques. Enfin, les effets cognitifs de l’enseignement par immersion sont mis en regard de ceux obtenus dans l’enseignement musical implicite effectue dans le cadre de la methode Suzuki. Ces paralleles demontrent que, dans les deux cas, l’apprentissage implicite a des effets cognitifs similaires sur les fonctions executives des enfants.