My Nguyen /mi: nwen/
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies
Office: 317, HHB, PolyU
E-Mail: my-vh.nguyen@polyu.edu.hk
Curriculum Vitae: PDF
Research Interests
My research examines how bilingual experience shapes cognition, education, and the brain from an interdisciplinary developmental neuroscience perspective. In previous work, I used structural MRI to investigate how language background—including age of acquisition, cortical thickness, and subcortical volume—differs between monolinguals, bilingual young adults, and adolescents, and I have also explored the long-term educational outcomes of bilingualism. More recently, my focus has shifted to behavioral studies of cognitive processing under emotional interference, revealing that both task type and language background strongly influence performance. Looking ahead, I aim to integrate these approaches by using fMRI to track how the brain supports real-time interactions between cognition and emotion in bilinguals. I am particularly interested in studying these processes in more naturalistic, ecologically valid scenarios and in fostering interdisciplinary collaborations that link neuroscience, psychology, and education to better understand how bilingualism shapes learning and development.
Publications
(* = co-first authored)
- Nguyen, M. V. H., Xu, Y., Vaughn, K. A., & Hernandez, A. E. (2024). Subcortical volume and language experience in bilingual and monolingual adolescents: An ABCD study. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 65, 101334. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2023.101334
- *Xu, Y., *Nguyen, M. V. H., Vaughn, K. A., Archila‐Suerte, P., & Hernandez, A. E. (2024). Subcortical volume and language proficiency in bilinguals and monolinguals: A structural MRI study. Brain and Language, 259, 105494. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105494
- Nguyen, M. V. H., Vaughn, K. A., Claussenius-Kalman, H., Archila-Suerte, P., & Hernandez, A. E. (2023). Cortical thickness is related to variability in heritage bilingual language proficiency. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 9(4), 364–379. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000362
- Nguyen, M. V. H., Hutchison, L., Norvell, G., Mead, D., & Winsler, A. (2023). Degree of bilingualism and executive function in early childhood. Language and Cognition, 16(3), 536 – 558. https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2023.46
- Vaughn, K. A., Nguyen, M. V. H., Ronderos, J., Hernandez, A. E. (2021). Cortical thickness in bilingual and monolingual children: Relationships to language use and language skill. NeuroImage, 243, 118560. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118560
- Nguyen, M. V. H., & Winsler, A. (2021). Early bilingualism predicts enhanced later foreign language learning in secondary school. Developmental Psychology, 57(11), 1926–1942. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001248