Figure 5.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging differential effects for the low ability group (group versus group comparisons): upper panel: during (overt) “sentence imitation” in L1 (first language) German and L2 (second language) English. Lower panel: during (overt) “word imitation” in L2 English and “L0” (unknown language) Tamil. Flexible factorial ANOVA was used to perform the group versus group analyses. The comparison “high ability versus low ability group” yielded no significant remaining activations for the “high” (N = 9) group (no brain maps presented). The comparison depicted here represents “low ability versus high ability”: significant suprathreshold activations emerging for the low ability group (N = 9) – in “sentence imitation” (also in the case of L1 German), as well as in “word imitation.” A typical left-hemisphere dominant network comprising inferior parietal, premotor, and inferior frontal regions, emerges. In case of English in “sentence imitation” and Tamil in “word imitation” a right hemispheric centro-parietal cluster is additionally recruited. Statistical threshold: p < 0.05, whole-brain corrected for multiple comparisons at cluster level; cluster extent threshold: k = 60 voxels (p = 0.05).