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Age of Acquisition of Mandarin Modulates Cortical Thickness in High-Proficient Cantonese–Mandarin Bidialectals

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Abstract

Previous studies showed that the onset age of second language acquisition (AoA-L2) can modulate brain structure of bilinguals. However, the underlying mechanism of anatomical plasticity induced by AoA-L2 is still a question in debate. In order to explore the issue, we recruited two groups of native Cantonese–Mandarin speakers, the early group began to speak in Mandarin at about 3.5 and the late group at about 6.5 years old. In addition, the early group had earlier experience in reading Chinese characters than the late group did. Through estimating the cortical thickness (CT), we found that (1) compared with the late group, the early group had thicker CT in the lateral occipital region, left middle temporal gyrus, and left parahippocampal region, which are all involved in visuospatial processing, probably reflecting the effect induced by the earlier or later experiences in processing the characters of Chinese for the two groups; and (2) compared with the late group, the early group had thicker CT in left superior parietal region, which is believed to be involved in language switching, maybe for the early group had the earlier experience in switching back and forth between Cantonese and Mandarin and therefore recruited the executive control network earlier. Our findings revealed the effects of the AoA-L2 in oral language acquisition as well as in written language acquisition as the main determinants of bilingual language structural representation in human brain.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Key Research Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Ministry of Education of China (15JZD048), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Phospherus Plan in Jinan University, 15JNQM002), Projects of Guangdong Provincial Key Platform of High Institutes(2015WTSCX004).

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  1. Liu Tu and Meiqi Niu have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Foreign Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Liu Tu, Wei Gao, Dan Ouyang, Meng Zhang & Shiya Li

  2. Center for the Study of Applied Psychology, Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science of Guangdong Province, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, People’s Republic of China

    Meiqi Niu, Xiaojin Liu & Ruiwang Huang

  3. Department of Radiology, Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Ximin Pan

  4. Department of Advanced Neuroimaging, Integrative Brain Imaging Center, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Kodaira, Tokyo, Japan

    Takashi Hanakawa

  5. Center for Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Zhi Lu

  6. Department of Applied Psychology, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, 510006, People’s Republic of China

    Junjing Wang

  7. Department of Radiology, Sun Yat Sen University First Affiliated Hospital, Guangzhou, 510080, People’s Republic of China

    Bo Jiang

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  1. Liu Tu
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Tu, L., Niu, M., Pan, X. et al. Age of Acquisition of Mandarin Modulates Cortical Thickness in High-Proficient Cantonese–Mandarin Bidialectals. J Psycholinguist Res 50, 723–736 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-020-09716-5

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