Around the Globe

The Brain's EEG Response to Language

Learning a language is an important milestone for a baby. It can change a baby's world-and the baby's brain. Psychologists have learned that people who do not hear certain sounds when they are young have problems learning to tell the difference between them. For example, many Japanese speakers cannot tell apart American English's R and L, which are not used in the Japanese language. Buchwald et al. (1994) decided to see if there was a physical difference in the way that the brains of Japanese natives and Americans react to the sounds of R and L. The researchers took electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings from English-speaking Japanese and American adults. The subjects listened to pairs of similar words beginning with R and L, like rip and lip, and also pairs of sounds that began with other letters, like ba and pa. The Americans showed a strong increase in brain electrical activity 250 milliseconds after they heard all words; the Japanese did too, but not for R and L words. Otherwise, the EEGs looked the same. In spite of years of exposure to English, the Japanese speakers' brains still did not react to sounds that do not occur in Japanese.