Effect of language experience on selective auditory attention : An event-related potential study

• Dual language experience has typically been shown to improve various executive control functions. We investigatedwith event-related brain potentials (ERPs) recorded from early (natively) bilingual speakers andcontrol participants whether it also affects auditory selective attention. We delivered to our participants two tonestreams, one to the left and one to the right ear. Both streams consisted of standard tones and two types ofinfrequent deviant tones which had either an enhanced duration or intensity. The participants were instructed toattend either to the right or left stream and to detect longer-duration deviants in the attended stream. The resultsshowed that the early bilinguals did not outperform the controls in target detection accuracy or speed. However,the late portion of the attention-related ERP modulation (the negative difference, Nd) was larger over the lefthemisphere in the early bilinguals than in the controls, suggesting that the maintenance of selective attention orfurther processing of selectively attended sounds is enhanced in the bilinguals. Moreover, the late reorientingnegativity (RON) in response to intensity-deviant tones was larger in the bilinguals, suggesting more efficientdisengagement of attention from distracting auditory events. Hence, our results demonstrate that brain responsesassociated with certain aspects of auditory attention are enhanced in the bilingual adults, indicating that earlydual language exposure modulates the neuronal responsiveness of auditory modality.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)