When: Tuesday, 30 March | 14:10-15:15

Where: Online

The Department of English and Modern Languages cordially invites you to a lecture on
Early childhood bilingualism: Effects on cognition and brain

Speaker:
Dr E. Argyri
Lecturer & Senior Research Fellow at the UCL Centre for Applied Linguistics

The abstract of the talk

The study of bilingualism provides a unique model to examine the neural changes linked to early experiences, i.e. whether there are early bilingual language experience effects on the brain, since two languages can be acquired from birth or one language can be acquired from birth and a second language later in life. Despite there being a greater number of multilingual adults in Europe compared with monolinguals, the effect of early bilingual language exposure on brain structure and function is still poorly understood. Crucially, most research has focused on adults, after decades of bilingualism exposure, alongside other experiences, making it increasingly difficult to associate changes in brain networks with specific experience-related factors. Our study focuses on English-Greek bilingual children and investigates whether cognitive and brain connectivity changes in bilingual children are mainly driven by (i) brain maturation stage at age of exposure to two languages, or by (ii) experience-related factors, for example, frequency of use of both languages. In this talk, I will discuss the rationale, the research objectives and the methodology of our cutting-edge research project.