Gigi Luk

Music and language are both multimodal inputs that shape early development, supporting shared attention, sensorimotor coordination, and embodied engagement. Although structured musical training has been linked to enhanced language outcomes, the implications of informal, home‐based music activities remain less understood, particularly among children who hear multiple languages at home. Guided by an embodied, embedded, ecological, enactive, and extended framework, this study examines how home music activities relate to language and motor development among toddlers with high English exposure (HE; ≥ 70% English) or high non‐English exposure (HNE; > 30% non‐English). Participants included 106 families with 18‐ to 31‐month‐olds ( M = 23.13), comprising pre‐pandemic lab‐based ( n = 30) and remote online ( n = 76) cohorts. Parents reported children's engagement in music and non‐music activities currently and retrospectively for infancy. Results revealed interactions between music activities and language exposure. HE toddlers exhibited higher English vocabulary and pragmatic skills than HNE toddlers. However, HNE toddlers who participated in more music activities demonstrated vocabulary and pragmatic abilities similar to their HE counterparts. Music activities also correlated with gross motor and perception‐action skills. Findings highlight music's embodied and enactive contributions to language and motor development and provide novel insights into how music relates to HNE children's development.

This study investigates whether a Set‐for‐Variability (SfV) reading intervention improves irregular word reading and induces neural changes in the N400, specifically earlier onset latency and increased negative amplitude in incongruent conditions, among children with persistent word reading difficulties (RD). A pre‐registered randomised control trial (RCT) was conducted with 30 children (average age: 9 years). Over 10 weeks, participants completed a 15‐h online reading program. The SfV group focused on phoneme variation in decoding both regular and exception words, while the Current Best Practices (CBP) group received synthetic phonics and sight word instruction. Pre‐ and post‐test reading ability and N400 event‐related potentials (ERPs) were collected. Post‐test results revealed that the SfV group achieved greater gains than the CBP group in irregular word reading, oral SfV, and increased N400 amplitude in the incongruent condition, indicating improved lexical‐semantic processing. These behavioural and neural gains suggest that the SfV intervention improved children's ability to resolve print–sound inconsistencies and supported more efficient lexical access.

Previous research on attitudes towards mathematics has mostly been assessed in a single language. We examined whether math attitudes differ by language in multilingual younger adults (ages 18-25). Furthermore, we evaluated the relationships between math attitudes, verbal memory, and calculation fluency in this sample. Eighty-seven French-English multilingual young adults self-reported their math attitudes using the Mathematics Anxiety Scale-Revised (Bai et al., 2009) in both English and French. Participants also self-reported verbal memory, calculation fluency, and general language proficiency in English and French. Results showed that attitudes towards mathematics for English and French were similar. Exploratory factor analysis also confirmed that the extracted factors revealed negative and positive attitudes towards mathematics, with English and French items loading on the same factors. Correlation analysis showed a negative relationship between negative attitudes towards mathematics and verbal memory only in English. This relationship remained statistically significant after controlling for general language proficiency. However, neither positive nor negative math attitudes were correlated with calculation fluency. Building on the examination of symbolic representations of mathematical cognition by Campbell, results from the study were interpreted as the first step to investigating math attitudes in individuals with diverse linguistic backgrounds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Spoken lessons (lectures) are commonly used in schools as a medium for conveying educational content. In adolescence, experience-expectant maturation of language and cognitive systems supports learning; however, little is known about whether or how learners' language experiences interact with this integration process during learning. We examined functional connectivity using fMRI in 38 Spanish–English bilingual (L1-Spanish) and English monolingual (L1-English) adolescents during a naturalistic science video lesson in English. Seed analyses including the left inferior frontal gyrus (pars opercularis) and posterior middle temporal gyrus showed that L1-Spanish adolescents, when learning in their second language (L2), displayed widespread bilateral functional connectivity throughout the cortex while L1-English adolescents displayed mostly left-lateralized connectivity with core language regions over the course of the science lesson. Furthermore, we identified functional seed connectivity associated with better learning outcomes for adolescents with diverse language backgrounds. Importantly, functional connectivity patterns in L1-Spanish adolescents while learning in English also correlate with their Spanish cloze reading. Findings suggest that functional networks associated with higher-order language processing and cognitive control are differentially engaged for L1 vs. L2 speakers while learning new information through spoken language.

Recent decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in the number of young children growing up with two languages and in the rise of bilingual programmes worldwide (e.g. Hoff 2018; Kirsch 2012). The sa...

Bilingualism is a multifaceted experience that researchers have examined using various questionnaires to gain insights and characterize the experience. However, there are several issues related to questionnaire choice. To address this, we applied Content Overlap Analysis to seven prevalent bilingualism questionnaires, assessing their affinity. We found little overlap in these questionnaires; most had fewer than 15% of items in common, suggesting they capture different aspects of the bilingual experience and provide complementary rather than redundant data for researchers. Our investigation highlights the importance of choosing a bilingualism assessment tool to carefully fit research questions and sample language experiences.