Orthographic depth, the consistency of grapheme-phoneme correspondence, influences brain activation in multilinguals’ first (L1) and second language (L2). The intrinsic functional connectivity of cross-language transfer was investigated between two groups of multilinguals, those whose L2 orthography is deeper than their L1 (S-to-D group) and those whose L2 orthography is shallower than their L1 (D-to-S group). We focused on two seed regions: the Visual Word Form Area (VWFA) and the left posterior supramarginal gyrus (pSMG). stronger connectivity was found between the left pSMG and the right precuneus in multilinguals who spoke at least three languages (trilinguals) compared to those who only spoke two languages (bilinguals). Follow-up analyses revealed that this difference was driven by stronger intrinsic connectivity in D-to-S trilinguals compared to the S-to-D trilinguals. Multilinguals’ intrinsic functional connectivity is shaped by the orthographic distance between L1 and L2, as well as differences between bilingualism and trilingualism.

In the U.S., Heritage language learners (HLLs) are bilinguals who grew up in homes where a non-English language was spoken but received English instruction from school. We used resting-state functional connectivity analysis to examine the differences in the reading networks of HLL and matched bilingual children who are biliterate in both languages (bilingual-biliterates). Compared to bilingual-biliterates, HLLs built a wider and more distributed reading network. This more distributed network included connections to regions known to be involved in motor control, verbal memory, speech production, and language control. Moreover, even though no significant difference in English reading was found, HLLs continued to show differentiated intrinsic connectivity associated with English reading scores. For HLLs only, better English reading scores were related to stronger functional connectivity between reading and language control areas. This suggests that HLLs are more likely to recruit brain regions involved in language control to achieve advanced English word reading.

Adoption is heavily studied through a deficit lens. Language, beliefs, stereotypes, and deficit perspectives in research have all impacted adoption laws, policies, and clinical practice. Few studies have investigated the academic achievement of children that are adopted (adoptees) without beginning with the premise that adoptees have diminished performance. In this 100-year retrospective study, we investigate the impact of adoption on academic achievement, taking an asset-based perspective. We found that adoptees are viewed as less academically successful than their non-adopted peers; yet, evidence only supports this claim in the context of children whose pre-adoptive environment included institutional deprivation. When removed from impoverished environments, adoptees catch-up academically. By using an asset-based perspective, we explore internationally adoptees’ academic strengths. Given that the academic achievement of adoptees is heavily studied in the context of literacy but extremely sparse in other academic domains (e.g., science), we provide evidence of adoptees’ language acquisition advantage.

Code-switching, or alternating between languages, among bilingual children is an oft-studied linguistic phenomenon. In the United States, given that the majority of school-aged bilingual children are Spanish-English speakers, understanding code-switching behavior is of utmost importance. Code-switching has been shown to increase bilingual children’s ability to communicate. This study is a systematic literature review spanning fifty years of research into school-aged Spanish-English bilingual children. Unsurprisingly, results indicated that language use and proficiency are the most common covariates across studies. Bilingual language proficiency refers to the ability to produce and comprehend a language with accuracy, and while educational outcomes of code-switching behaviors are highly correlated with bilingual children’s oral language proficiency, few code-switching studies focused on written language. Therefore, children’s ability to communicate through written language code-switching is a drastically under-explored phenomenon, which has large implications for educational outcomes, psychological and linguistic theory, and future neuroscience research.

Reading disability is a brain-based difficulty in acquiring fluent reading skills that affects significant numbers of children. Although neuroanatomical and neurofunctional networks involved in typical and atypical reading are increasingly well characterized, the underlying neurochemical bases of individual differences in reading development are virtually unknown. The current study is the first to examine neurochemistry in children during the critical period in which the neurocircuits that support skilled reading are still developing. In a longitudinal pediatric sample of emergent readers whose reading indicators range on a continuum from impaired to superior, we examined the relationship between individual differences in reading and reading-related skills and concentrations of neurometabolites measured using magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Both continuous and group analyses revealed that choline and glutamate concentrations were negatively correlated with reading and related linguistic measures in phonology and vocabulary (such that higher concentrations were associated with poorer performance). Correlations with behavioral scores obtained 24 months later reveal stability for the relationship between glutamate and reading performance. Implications for neurodevelopmental models of reading and reading disability are discussed, including possible links of choline and glutamate to white matter anomalies and hyperexcitability. These findings point to new directions for research on gene-brain-behavior pathways in human studies of reading disability.