To test the hypothesis that this neural adaptation may vary as a function of structural and orthographic characteristics of bilinguals' two languages, we compared Spanish-English and French-English bilingual children, and English monolingual children, using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy neuroimaging (fNIRS, ages 6 10, N =26).
Bilinguals might have different baseline characteristics from monolinguals; instead of bilingualism leading to cognitive differences, original differences (eg, childhood intelligence [CI]) could lead to bilingualism.
While age may affect the sufficiency of the workforce overall, bilingual capability is a practitioner characteristic that may directly affect access to care.
"While language use differs among Hispanics -- some speak only English, some speak only Spanish and some are bilingual -- Spanish is still a characteristic that, for the most part, unites much of group," Lopez said.
When it occasionally lingers midriver, the ferry becomes the ultimate in-between: floating proof that what Americans call the border (a hard line to be defended), Mexicans more appropriately call la frontera, a bilingual frontier with a unique mingling of characteristics.
Practitioner characteristics include age, gender, and bilingual status.
But beyond that, the community's unifying characteristics disintegrate into a geographically disaggregated, bilingual jumble of two dozen nationalities and differing levels of acculturation, raising questions about whether it even makes sense to group everyone under the same term.
The findings inform theories of bilingual and cross-linguistic literacy acquisition by suggesting that structural characteristics of bilinguals' two languages and their orthographies have a significant impact on children's neuro-cognitive architecture for learning to read.
In conjunction with the dental exam, an experienced bilingual interviewer conducted comprehensive assessments of psychosocial, behavioral, and substance-use characteristics of study participants.
