2005 — 2009 |
Petitto, Laura-Ann |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Behavioral and Neuroimaging Studies of Bilingual Reading
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overarching aim of the proposed research is to understand READING--and the development of the core cognitive, phonological, and syntactic processes that underlie reading-in BILINGUAL children, and adults. Here we investigate the neurodevelopment, neural systems, and functional neuroanatomy of bilingual reading and concomitant cognitive abilities using state-of-the-art neuroimaging and behavioral techniques. Much controversy exists in education, science, and bilingual homes regarding when (what age) to expose young children to two languages and when and how best to teach such children to read in each of their two reading systems, which we address here: (1) Does bilingual language exposure give rise to concomitant cognitive advantages (such as select enhancement of attention and inhibition abilities), what is its basis, and does it positively transfer to other domains of learning such as reading? (2) Is it best to teach bilingual children their two reading systems sequentially (first one, then the other) or at the same time (simultaneously)? (3) What is the neurodevelopmental time course, functional neuroanatomy, and neural systems underlying bilingual children and adults' cognitive attention and inhibition, phonological and syntactic processing that form the heart of reading in each of their two languages? To answer these questions in a manner that is most widely generalizable, our studies involve children and adults across 4 distinct regions of the United States and Canada, whom use among 5 different world languages, including sign languages. The results of these studies will provide fundamental "evidence-based" knowledge about the multitude of variables (cognitive, phonological, syntactic) underlying skilled reading acquisition in young bilinguals and the developmental trajectories of these important variables to predict better reading outcome. These studies may directly benefit teachers, clinicians, and parents of bilingual children by informing us about when and how best to teach reading to young bilinguals, and they may fundamentally impact educational policy on the teaching of reading in the United States.
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2005 — 2007 |
Grafton, Scott Petitto, Laura-Ann Dunbar, Kevin Heatherton, Todd (co-PI) [⬀] Gazzaniga, Michael |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Slc Center: Center For Cognitive and Educational Neuroscience (C-Cen)
The Center for Cognitive and Educational Neuroscience (C-CEN) at Dartmouth, under the direction of Michael Gazzaniga and funded under the NSF Science of Learning Program, will bring together the fields of cognitive neuroscience and education. Education changes the brain, and understanding this complex process will be fundamental to creating a science of learning. Based on our understanding of how the brain encodes, stores, and activates knowledge, what are the barriers to learning, and how can ways around those barriers be implemented? What is the brain-basis of core content areas of learning, including language, math, science, and literacy? How do social/cultural cues impact the ability to learn? And how is learning regulated by genetic factors? To explore these and related questions, C-CEN will advance basic discovery in cognitive and educational neuroscience, foster a dialogue between researchers and educators, and create learning deliverables that will enhance and transform education for diverse participants.
The research core of C-CEN will advance basic discovery of the brain basis of human learning by conducting research on (a) core content areas of learning: language, reading, science, and math; and (b) fundamental aspects of learning: transfer of learning , brain lateralization, social aspects of learning, and brain development. This research will be conducted by (a) using multiple techniques including functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Near Infra-Red Spectrography, Evoked Response Potentials, genetic and behavioral measures; (b) across several ages, infants, children, adolescents, and young adults, and (c) using multiple contexts including the laboratory, formal classrooms, and informal learning environments.
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2006 — 2007 |
Petitto, Laura-Ann |
R21Activity Code Description: To encourage the development of new research activities in categorical program areas. (Support generally is restricted in level of support and in time.) |
Infants'Neural Basis For Language Using New Nirs
[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose an entirely new application of new brain imaging technology (Near Infrared Spectroscopy, NIRS) to a previously unresolved scientific debate that has puzzled scientists for nearly 40 years: How do young infants discover the phonetic building blocks of their language from the constantly varying linguistic and perceptual stream around them? NIRS is non-invasive optical technology that, like fMRI, measures cerebral hemodynamic activity and thus permits 1 to "see" inside the brains of children and adults while processing specific aspects of language and cognitive tasks. Unlike fMRI, NIRS is highly portable, child-friendly (child can be seated on mom's lap in home, lab or school), tolerates movement more than fMRI (participants can vocalize/talk), and can be used with alert babies. Standardized behavioral tasks involving (i) visual perception, (ii) auditory perception, and (iii) native and non-native phonetic perception will be used with "young" (3-4 mo) and "old" (13-14 mo) infants and adults during NIRS recordings to test specific within- hemisphere neuroanatomical hypotheses about specific tissue (and networks of neural tissue) and their linguistic or general auditory perception functions. Our use of this exciting new NIRS technology with infants in this way will provide important resolutions to scientific questions about (a) the multiple factors that underlie early language acquisition and general auditory perception and the specific type of processing tissue that govern them, (b) the developmental trajectories of linguistic and general auditory processing tissue, and (c) the peaked sensitivity that linguistic and auditory processing tissue has to certain kinds of input over others in early development. This work will help resolve classic scientific debate about whether language-specific versus perception-general mechanisms initiate/govern early language learning, and lay bare the multiple factors that become integrated in early life to promote later healthy language growth in children. These findings, with our plan to provide guidelines for the principled use of NIRS with infants, may ultimately be used to identify and predict babies at risk for language/sequencing disorders (e.g., dyslexia) even before they babble or utter their first words. These findings about children's phonological capacity will also provide scientific "evidence-based" information vital to word segmentation in successful language learning and reading and will impact U.S. educational policy regarding early language remediation and teaching. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]
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