THE EFFECT OF BILINGUALISM ON UNFAMILIAR LANGUAGE PERCEPTION
doi.org/10.17721/1728.2748.2025.100.50-55
Keywords:
electroencephalography (EEG), neurophysiology, neurolinguistics, bilingualismAbstract
Background. A growing number of scientists are studying the mechanisms of different aspects of language acquisition and perception and searching for new methods of mastering them. The impact of bilingualism on cognitive functions, such as attention, memory, concentration, etc., is also important.
Methods. The present study, based on the EEG recording technique, highlights the influence of bilingualism on the perception of different languages, namely the native language (represented by Ukrainian), a second language mastered at a certain level (represented by English), and a language that has not been previously learned at any level (represented by Finnish). These languages belong to different language groups, which makes it impossible to fully or partially understand words or phrases based on associations with similar linguistic structures in familiar languages. The purpose of this study was not just to prove the difference in the perception of different languages but to describe in detail the change in electrical activity in the brain, to investigate which frequency bands and sub-bands are involved, and which brain regions may be responsible for this function. For this study, 20 bilingual and multilingual students aged 18-22 were involved, and they voluntarily agreed to participate in the survey.
Results. The study results showed a statistically significant difference in the perception of the following languages in pairs: Ukrainian and English, English and Finnish, and Ukrainian and Finnish. This difference is most pronounced in the β1 and β2 frequency sub-bands. The following brain areas are involved in processing languages of different language groups with different intensities: the occipital part of the right and left hemispheres, the temporal part of the left hemisphere, and the parietal part of the right hemisphere.
Conclusions. The observed neural differences in the perception of known and unknown languages provide further evidence that language comprehension relies on both auditory and cognitive processing mechanisms, engaging different brain regions depending on familiarity with the language. The increased activation in the occipito-temporal and parietal regions during language processing suggests that both linguistic and non-linguistic factors—such as phonological familiarity and semantic expectations—play a crucial role in language perception. A detailed study of bilingualism and mechanisms of language perception opens up prospects for the creation of improved methods of teaching foreign languages, which will accordingly expand people's ability to use large amounts of information to improve their knowledge and skills.
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