The effect of gender on L1-L2 syntactic processing in Turkish-Persian balanced Bilinguals using fMRI

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research article

Authors
S. meykadeh 1
W. Sommer 2
A. Golfam 1
S. A. H. Batouli 3
1 Tarbiat Modares University
2 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
3 Tehran University of Medical Sciences
Abstract
The present study aimed to investigate the effect of gender on the L1-L2 syntactic processing in balanced bilinguals who learned their L2 at the age of seven. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI), Turkish-Persian balanced bilinguals (15 women and 15 men) performed an auditory grammaticality judgment task with an alternating language switching paradigm. Based on the Bilingual Dominance Scale, no significant difference was observed between the participants' proficiency in their L1 (Turkish) and L2 (Persian). Imaging results demonstrated strong neural similarity between men and women in two left-lateralized syntax-specific ROIs (Pars opercularis and posterior superior temporal gyrus), supporting the indistinguishable gender performance during L1-L2 syntactic processing. In addition, in EF-specific areas in right-hemisphere (planum temporale, supplementary motor area, superior parietal lobule and superior frontal gyrus), we did not observe differences in hemispheric recruitment by men and women, evidencing empirically for gender sameness in lateralization. Therefore, the present task and sample are not consistent with the previous claims that women show (a) superior language performance and (b) less lateralization. In general, our findings suggest that L1 and L2 syntactic processing in balanced bilinguals is not affected by the gender parameter.

Keywords

Subjects

Abutalebi, J., Annoni, J. M., Zimine, I., Pegna, A. J., Seghier, M. L., LeeJahnke, H., et al. (2008). Language control and lexical competition in bilinguals: an eventrelated fMRI study. Cereb. Cortex 18, 1496–1505. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhm182
Antón, E., Carreiras, M., and Duñabeitia, J. A. (2019). The impact of bilingualism on executive functions and working memory in young adults. PLoS One 14:e0206770
Anvari, H., and Givi, H. A. (2006). Persian Grammar 2. Tehran: Fatemi Press.
Baxter, L. C., Saykin, A. J., Flashman, L. A., Johnson, S. C., Guerin, S. J., Babcock, D., and Wishart, H. A. (2003). Sex differences in semantic language processing: A functional MRI study. Brain and Language, 84(2), 264–272.
Berken, J.A., Chai, X., Chen, J.K., Gracco, V.L., & Klein, D., (2016). Effects of early and late bilingualism on resting-state functional connectivity. J. Neurosci. 36, 1165–1172.
Burman, D. D., Minas, T., Bolger, D. J., and Booth, J. R. (2013). Age, sex, and verbal abilities affect location of linguistic connectivity in ventral visual pathway. Brain and Language, 124(2), 184-193.
Buxton R. B. (2013). The physics of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Reports on progress in physics. Physical Society (Great Britain), vol. 76, no. 9, 096601.
Chiu, M. M., and McBride-Chang, C. (2006). Gender, context, and reading: A comparison of students in 43 countries. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10(4), 331–362.
Comrie, B. (2009). The world’s major languages. Second Edition. Routledge. London.
Green, D. W. (1998). Mental control of the bilingual lexico-semantic system.
Bilingualism Lang. Cogn. 1, 67–81.
Green, D. W., and Abutalebi, J. (2013). Language control in bilinguals: the adaptive control hypothesis. J. Cogn. Psychol. (Hove) 25, 515–530.
Gullifer, J.W., Chai, X.J., Whitford, V., Pivneva, I., Baum, S., Klein, D., and Titone, D. (2018). Bilingual experience and resting-state brain connectivity: impacts of L2 age of acquisition and social diversity of language use on control networks. Neuropsychologia 117:123-134.
Hartsuiker, R. J., Pickering, M. J., and Veltkamp, E. (2004). Is syntax separate or shared between languages? Psychological Science, 15(6), 409–414.
Hernandez, A. E. (2009). Language switching in the bilingual brain: what is next? Brain Lang. 109, 133–140.
Hervais-Adelman, A. G., Moser-Mercer, B., and Golestani, N. (2011). Executive
control of language in the bilingual brain: integrating the evidence from
neuroimaging to neuropsychology. Front. Psychol. 2:234. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.
2011.00234
Hirnstein, M., Westerhausen, R., and Hugdahl, K. (2013). The right planum temporale is involved in stimulus-driven, auditory attention–evidence from transcranial magnetic stimulation. PLoS One 8:e57316.
Hirnstein, M., Westerhausen, R., Korsnes, M. S., and Hugdahl, K. (2013). Sex differences in language asymmetry are age-dependent and small: A large-scale, consonant–vowel dichotic listening study with behavioral and fMRI data. Cortex, 49(7), 1910–1921.
Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60(6), 581–592.
Jenkinson, M., Bannister, P., Brady, M., and Smith, S. (2002). Improved optimization for the robust and accurate linear registration and motion correction of brain images. Neuroimage 17, 825–841.
Jenkinson, M., and Smith, S. M. (2001). A global optimization method for robust affine registration of brain images. Med. Image Anal. 5, 143–156.
Ketrez, F. N. (2012). A Student Grammar of Turkish. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lerman, A., and Obler, L. K. (2017). ‘‘Aging in bilinguals: normal and abnormal,’’ in Handbook of Psychology of Bilingualism: The Cognitive and Emotional World of Bilinguals. The Bilingual Mind and Brain Book Series, eds A. Ardila, A. Cie´slicka, R. Heredia and M. Rosselli (Cham: Springer).
Li, L., Abutalebi, J., Zou, L., Yan, X., Liu, L., Feng, X., Wang, R., Guo, T., & Ding, G. (2015). Bilingualism alters brain functional connectivity between "control" regions and "language" regions: Evidence from bimodal bilinguals. Neuropsychologia, 71, 236–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.04.007
Liu, X., Tu, L., Wang, J., Jiang, B., Gao, W., Pan, X., Li, M., Zhong, M., Zhu, Z., Niu, M., Li, Y., Zhao, L., Chen, X., Liu, C., Lu, Z., & Huang, R. (2017). Onset age of L2 acquisition influences language network in early and late Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals. Brain and language, 174, 16–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2017.07.003
Logan, S., and Johnston, R. (2010). Investigating gender differences in reading. Educational Review, 62(2), 175–187.
Luk, G., Green, D. W., Abutalebi, J., and Grady, C. (2011). Cognitive control for language switching in bilinguals: a quantitative meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies. Lang. Cogn. Process. 27, 1479–1488.
Meykadeh, A. (2021). An investigation of the effects of language proficiency and
age of acquisition on neural organization for morphosyntactic processing using ERPs and
fMRI [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Tarbiat Modares University.
Paradis, M. (1993). Linguistic, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistics aspects of ‘‘interference’’ in bilingual speakers: the activation threshold hypothesis. Int. J. Psycholinguist. 9, 133–145.
Paradis, M. (2001). An integrated neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism (1976–2000). Paper Presented at the LACUS Forum 27 Houston, TX.
Poldrack, R. A. (2007). Region of interest analysis for fMRI. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2 (1), 67-70.
Purves, D., Augustine, G. J., Fitzpatrick, D., Hall, W. C., LaMantia, A., Mooney, R. D., Platt, M. L., and White, L. E. (2018) Neuroscience. 6th Edition. New York, NY: Sinauer Associates.
Rodriguez-Fornells, A., Rotte, M., Heinze, H. J., Nösselt, T., and Münte, T. F. (2002). Brain potential and functional MRI evidence for how to handle two languages with one brain. Nature 415, 1026–1029.
Román, P., and Gómez-Gómez, I. (2022). Changes in Native Sentence Processing Related to Bilingualism: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 757023.
Shaywitz, B. A., Shaywltz, S. E., Pugh, K. R., Constable, R. T., Skudlarski, P., Fulbright, R. K., … Katz, L. (1995). Sex differences in the functional organization of the brain for language. Nature, 373(6515), 607–609.
Sanchis-Segura, C., Ibañez-Gual, M., Adrián-Ventura, J., Aguirre, N., Gómez-Cruz, Á.,
Avila, C., and Forn, C. (2019). Sex differences in gray matter volume: how many and how
large are they really? Biology of sex Differences, 10(1), 1-19.
Smith, S. M. (2002). Fast robust automated brain extraction. Hum. Brain Mapp. 17, 143–155.
Sommer, I. E., Aleman, A., Bouma, A., and Kahn, R. S. (2004). Do women really have more bilateral language representation than men? A meta-analysis of functional imaging studies. Brain, 127(8), 1845–1852.
Sommer, I. E., Aleman, A., Somers, M., Boks, M.P., and Kahn, RS. (2008). Sex differences in handedness, asymmetry of the planum temporale and functional language lateralization. Brain Res.
1206:76–88.
Stoet, G., and Geary, D. C. (2013). Sex differences in mathematics and reading achievement are inversely related: Within-and across-nation assessment of 10 years of PISA data. PLoS One, 8(3), e57988.
Wang, Y., Kuhl, P. K., Chen, C., and Dong, Q. (2009). Sustained and transient language control in the bilingual brain. NeuroImage 47, 414–422.
Wang, Y., Xue, G., Chen, C., Xue, F., and Dong, Q. (2007). Neural bases of asymmetric language switching in second-language learners: an ER-fMRI study. NeuroImage 35, 862–870.
Woolrich, M. W., Ripley, B. D., Brady, J. M., and Smith, S. M. (2001). Temporal autocorrelation in univariate linear modelling of fMRI data. NeuroImage 14, 1370–1386.
Xu, M., Baldauf, D., Chang, C. Q., Desimone, R., and Tan, L. H. (2017). Distinct distributed patterns of neural activity are associated with two languages in the bilingual brain. Sci. Adv. 3:e1603309.
Xu, M., Liang, X., Ou, J., Li, H., Luo, Y.-J., and Tan, L. H. (2019). Sex differences in functional brain networks for language. Cerebral Cortex. 30 (3), 1528-1537.
Zawiszewski, A., and Laka, I. (2020). Bilinguals processing noun morphology: Evidence for the Language Distance Hypothesis from event-related potentials. Journal of Neurolinguistics. 55, 100908.
Zell, E., Krizan, Z., and Teeter, S. R. (2015). Evaluating gender similarities and differences using metasynthesis. American Psychologist, 70(1), 10–20.
Language Related Research

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 13 July 2025