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Abstract:
Previous functional imaging studies on bilingualism have
produced controversial results on whether age of acquisition (AoA)
or proficiency level of a second language (L2) are the main
determinants of its functional organization. In this study, we
addressed this issue for grammar and for semantic judgment using
fMRI. Three groups of bilingual (Italian-German) subjects were
examined: early acquisition high proficiency (EAHP), late
acquisition high proficiency (LAHP) and late acquisition low
proficiency (LALP). They were asked to judge the correctness of
visual presented sentences that were either correct or contained a
semantic anomaly or a grammatical error. Both, semantic and
grammatical judgment resulted in activation of the left inferior
frontal and temporal gyrus. During semantic judgment, activation of
the left temporal regions was consistently more pronounced than
during grammatical judgment. In all subjects, judgments in L1
(first language) and L2 resulted in a very similar pattern of
activation. However, the amplitude and size of activations elicited
by judgments in L2 were substantially different between the three
groups: the LALP-group showed the largest and strongest activations
and the LAHP-group showed larger activations than the EAHP-group.
In conclusion these findings suggest that both, AoA and
proficiency-level considerably influence the cortical
representation of grammatical and semantic judgment in L2 in early
and late bilinguals.
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