The Neural Recruitment of Executive Function in Monolingual versus Bilingual Preterm-born Children: An FNIRS Study

Authors

Caitlyn F. Myland, Florida International UniversityFollow

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Major/Program

Biomedical Engineering

First Advisor's Name

Ranu Jung

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee chair

Second Advisor's Name

Melissa Baralt

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee member

Third Advisor's Name

Wei-Chiang Lin

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee member

Keywords

fNIRS, preterm born children, executive function, monolingual, bilingual

Date of Defense

6-28-2019

Abstract

Premature-birth is defined by the World Health Organization as birth less than 37 weeks. These children are particularly susceptible deficiencies in executive functioning (EF) as compared to term-born children. It has yet to be explored whether bilingualism might also give an edge to preterm-born-children (PBC) in EF. The present study aims to fill this gap by examining the EF of bilingual versus monolingual preterm-born children in Miami-Dade County. All 16 children were right-handed, ages 6-7, and born before 35 weeks. Results showed that both groups performed about the same on the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) and Go/No Go (GNG) task in terms of accuracy, however, the bilingual-PBC were over two times as fast in response as the monolingual group in the Go-trial suggesting faster information processing ability. Preliminary fNIRS analysis did not reveal a statistically significant difference in the brain activity over a broad area of the frontal lobe.

Identifier

FIDC007819

Recommended Citation

Myland, Caitlyn F., "The Neural Recruitment of Executive Function in Monolingual versus Bilingual Preterm-born Children: An FNIRS Study" (2019). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 4216.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/4216