I am a PhD student in the Language Development Department of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, supervised by Professor Caroline Rowland and Dr. Sergio Miguel Pereira Soares. My study focuses on how bilingualism affects neurobiological changes in the developing brain.
Having more than one language in the brain is not uncommon in modern societies. In fact, over 50% of the global population is bilingual, indicating that a significant portion of younger generations is growing up in bilingual or multilingual environments. Therefore, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of how developing brains adapt to bilingual experiences.
In my PhD project, we investigate the impact of bilingualism on neurobiological changes in the developing brain, using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) methods. Our focus is on understanding the underlying neural mechanisms of bilingual children's lexical and morphological semantic development, such as how bilingual toddlers build their lexical semantic network around the same time. Additionally, we are examining whether factors related to bilingual experience, such as age of exposure, the amount of exposure, and proficiency in both languages, contribute to individual differences during development. For the EEG studies, we are currently recruiting German-Dutch bilingual children from 2 to 6 years old.