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Factors affecting the variability of the central mechanisms for maintaining bilingualism

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“The human brain, in all its details, … even as fine as microprocessors and molecular processes, is adapted precisely to speech and thinking operations…”.

P.K. Anokhin

Abstract

The article discusses the probable role of many factors that determine the individual variety of the neurophysiological mechanisms that provide the opportunity to learn and use fluently two or more languages. The formation of the speech function is affected by both the general factors for bilinguals and monolinguals, as well as by the specific characteristic of bilingualism. General factors include genetic and environmental impacts explaining the diversity of individual options for the development of the morphofunctional organization of the speech function. Bilinguals, obviously, have an even wider variation of the central maintenance of speech ability, due to the combination of different conditions that influence the language environment, which include the age of second language acquisition, the language proficiency, the linguistic similarity of the languages, the method of their acquisition, intensity of use, and the area where each language is used. The influence of these factors can be mediated in different ways by the individual characteristics of the bilingual’s brain. Being exposed to two languages from the first days of life, the child uses for the development of speech skills the unique features of the brain that exist only at the initial stages of postnatal ontogenesis. At an older age, mastering a second language requires much more effort, when, in the course of maturation, the brain acquires new additional possibilities but permanently loses that special “bonus” that nature gives to a small child only in the first months of life. Large individual variability patterns of activation of the cortex during verbal activity in older bilinguals, compared with the younger ones, allows us to assume that the brain of the older bilingual mastering a new language is forced to manipulate a large number of backup mechanisms, and this is reflected in an increase in the variation of the cerebral processes responsible for speech functions. In addition, there is a serious reason to believe that learning a second language contributes to the expansion of the functional capabilities of the brain and creates the basis for successful cognitive activity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, 194223, Russia

    O. V. Kruchinina, E. I. Galperina, E. E. Kats & A. N. Shepoval’nikov

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  1. O. V. Kruchinina
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  2. E. I. Galperina
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  3. E. E. Kats
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  4. A. N. Shepoval’nikov
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Original Russian Text © O.V. Kruchinina, E.I. Galperina, E.E. Kats, A.N. Shepoval’nikov, 2012, published in Fiziologiya Cheloveka, 2012, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp. 15–31.

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Kruchinina, O.V., Galperina, E.I., Kats, E.E. et al. Factors affecting the variability of the central mechanisms for maintaining bilingualism. Hum Physiol 38, 571–585 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0362119712060084

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