ArticleHuman brain mapping2021
Individual differences in representational similarity of first and second languages in the bilingual brain.
Article in Human brain mapping, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- A meta-analysis of letter-sound integration: Assimilation and accommodation in the superior temporal gyrus.Human brain mapping · 2024Pooled it
- A Review of Neuroimaging Research of Chinese as a Second Language: Insights from the Assimilation-Accommodation Framework.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Basque-Spanish Bilingual Aphasia: A Case-Study to Reveal Frequency-Based, Language-Agnostic Lexical Organization in Bilinguals.Neurobiology of language (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Language anxiety: understanding past research and new directions with d/Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing communities.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Enhancing the network specific individual characteristics in rs-fMRI functional connectivity by dictionary learning.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- The depth of semantic processing modulates cross-language pattern similarity in Chinese-English bilinguals.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Individual differences in representational similarity of first and second languages in the bilingual brain.Human brain mapping · 2021Article
- Neuro-Cognitive Differences in Semantic Processing Between Native Speakers and Proficient Learners of Mandarin Chinese.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Current theories of bilingualism disagree on the extent to which separate brain regions are used to maintain or process one's first and second language. The present study took a novel multivariate approach to address this question. We examined whether bilinguals maintain distinct neural representations of two languages; specifically, we tested whether brain areas that are involved in processing word meaning in either language are reliably representing each language differently, and whether language representation is influenced by individual differences in proficiency level and age of acquisition (AoA) of L2. Thirty-one English-Mandarin bilingual adults performed a picture-word matching task in both languages. We then used representational similarity analysis to examine which brain regions reliably showed different patterns of activity for each language. We found that both proficiency and AoA predicted dissimilarity between language representations in several brain areas within the language network as well as several regions of the ventral visual pathway, demonstrating that top-down language knowledge and individual language experience shapes concept representation in this processing stream. The results support the model of an integrated language system in bilinguals, along with a novel description of how representations for each language change with proficiency level and L2 AoA.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.