Transcript Native Language Shifts Across Sleep

Ariah Wong
 Sleep talking (somniloquy)
the utterance of speech or sounds during sleep
without simultaneous subjective detailed awareness
of the event.
 mumbled nonsense to coherent sentences

 More frequent in children & teenagers
 Associated with REM & NREM sleep
 Study which language is used when healthy
bilingual individuals are sleep talking
 Dominant bilinguals – use dominant
language to sleep talk
 Balanced bilinguals – use?
 Subjects
 681 Children
 336
males, 341 females, 4 unknown
 Age 3-17 (mean age: 9.0)
 3 bilingual schools in northern Spain
 Languages: Spanish & Euskera
 Procedure
 Parents completed self-administered
questionnaire
was the 1st language learned by your child?
 Does your child sleep talk? If yes, how frequent and
in what language?
 What
 Reliable answers
 Skip
questions in doubt
 Contact investigator to clarify any questions
 383 of 680 subjects were sleep talking (56.3%)
 Balanced bilinguals

Sleep talk in either language (no preference)
 Dominant bilinguals

Mostly sleep talk in the dominant language
 Less than 4% of dominant bilinguals sleep
talked in their non-dominant language
 Language shift:
Due to emotional stress
 Different language organization

 Learn
languages early = same brain areas
 Learn one language earlier, one later = different
brain areas
 Strengths
Easy to read, organized
 Good sample size & balance of genders

 Limitations
No clear hypothesis
 Basing study on parents’ opinions
 No relation to specific brain structures

 Frontal
& temporal cortex, basal ganglia?
 Future research
Use video surveillance/recording system
 Gender differences
 Multilinguals (know 2+ languages)
 Sleep is related to anatomical & physiological
structure of language
 Narrower age range

 American Academy of Sleep Medicine. (2001). The
international classification of sleep disorders: diagnostic
and coding manual. 157-159.
 Arkin, AM. (1966). Sleep talking: a review. Journal of
nervous and mental disease, 143, 101-122.
 Arkin, AM., Toth, MF., Baker, J., & Hastey, JM. (1970). The
frequency of sleep talking in the laboratory among chronic
sleeptalkers and good dream recallers. Journal of nervous
and mental disease, 151(9), 369-374
 Pareja, JA., de Pablos, E., Caminero, AB., Millan, I., &
Dobato, JL. (1999). Native language shifts across sleepwake states in bilingual sleeptalkers. Sleep, 22(2), 243-247.