1. Ariah Wong

2. 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

3. Study which language is used when healthy bilingual individuals are sleep talking Dominant bilinguals – use dominant language to sleep talk Balanced bilinguals – use?

4. 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

5. Procedure Parents completed self-administered questionnaire  What was the 1 st language learned by your child?  Does your child sleep talk? If yes, how frequent and in what language? Reliable answers  Skip questions in doubt  Contact investigator to clarify any questions

6. 383 of 680 subjects were sleep talking (56.3%)

9. Balanced bilinguals Sleep talk in either language (no preference) Dominant bilinguals Mostly sleep talk in the dominant language

10. 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

11. 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?

12. 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

13. 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 sleep- wake states in bilingual sleeptalkers. Sleep, 22(2), 243-247.