Taken together, such evidence strongly suggests bilingualism can impinge on timing and degree of cognitive and/or neural decline.
Bilingual people enjoy advantages: they have enriched cognitive control, it's likely that they have improved metalinguistic awareness, as well as better memory, visual-spatial skills and even creativity.
Bilinguals present with symptoms of dementia at a later time than monolinguals, but as a result also decline in cognition and subsequent clinical diagnosis at a faster rate than monolingual peers.
Bilinguals are able to solve conflicts faster and perform cognitive tasks with more proficiency due to this increase in activity in the left lobe. Neuroplasticity, in turn, is fostered through cognitive performance based on the unique physiological effects of bilingualism.
A person's bilingual memories are heavily dependent on the person's fluency, the age the second language was acquired, and high language proficiency to both languages. High proficiency provides mental flexibility across all domains of thought and forces them to adopt strategies that accelerate cognitive development.
According to a historical review in "The Journal of Genetic Psychology," various researchers held these beliefs, noting a "problem of bilingualism" or the "handicapping influence of bilingualism." Following studies reported that bilinguals performed worse in IQ tests and suffered in most aspects of language development ...
Early research on bilingualism, conducted before the 1960s, however, linked bilingualism with lower IQ scores, cognitive deficiencies and even mental retardation. These studies reported that monolingual children were up to three years ahead of bilingual children in both verbal and non-verbal intelligence.
On the other hand, some of the disadvantages of bilingualism are an apparent delay in language acquisition; interference between the two phonological, lexical, and grammatical systems; and a possible decrease in vocabulary in both languages.
“When your brain processes language, it's not one place in the brain that processes language,” Marian says. “It's a network that's spread across all areas of the brain.” Because of that, bilingual brains have more pathways connecting different words, concepts and memories across different languages.
Furthermore, monolinguals have prospectively shown a higher atrophy rate and greater cognitive decline than bilinguals over time. Together, our results suggest that bilingualism promotes both CR and brain reserve.
Summary: Bilingual children develop a better working memory –- which holds, processes and updates information over short periods of time -– than monolingual children, according to new research.
Studies have shown that people who utilise their brains more through furthering their language tend to have lower rates of dementia and memory problems later in life regardless of education levels, gender or occupation.
A key feature of multilingual cognition is that two or more languages can become activated at the same time, requiring mechanisms to control interference. Consequently, extensive experience managing multiple languages can influence cognitive processes as well as their neural correlates.
Although bilingual people are not necessarily “smarter” or more intelligent than monolingual people, they do have a stronger executive function which results in a better ability to switch between tasks, they also have more efficient monitoring systems and a heightened cognitive ability.
In contrast, learning a second language too early can lead to a loss of the native language and the inadequate mastery of native language makes it more difficult to learn a foreign language. Academic burden and external factor such as the lack of proper education can hinder the second- language-process as well.
It has been suggested that early lifelong bilingualism affects the structure of white matter (WM) of the brain and preserves its integrity in older age. Here we show that similar WM effects are also found in bilingual individuals who learn their second language (L2) later in life and are active users of both languages.
For example, relative to a bilingual, a trilingual has to remember even more words and has to inhibit even more languages. To adapt to this increase in cognitive demands, trilinguals may develop a larger cognitive supply (i.e., greater advantages) than bilinguals.
Thinking about learning another language? New research suggests it's a good idea. The journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition recently published a study which uncovered that bilingual people have an easier time concentrating than those who only speak their native tongue.
Bilingual speakers have two minds in one body, new research has revealed. Speaking two languages literally changes the way we see the world, and bilingual speakers think differently to those who only use their native tongue.
The 40-Year Debate Over Bilingual Education
Grooms finds the principal arguments of bilingual education's critics to be that it hinders students' ability to speak, read, and write in English, and even worse, to assimilate culturally.
Bilingualism causes language delay. FALSE. While a bilingual child's vocabulary in each individual language may be smaller than average, his total vocabulary (from both languages) will be at least the same size as a monolingual child (10, 15).
Bilingualism is divided into three different types. Both co-ordinated bilingualism and compound bilingualism develop in early childhood and are classified as forms of early bilingualism. The third type is late bilingualism, which develops when a second language is learned after age 12.
Knowing how to speak a second language has many advantages, and many studies suggests that bilingual kids are smarter than others. In fact, there are some which even note the differences in how the brain develops with bilingual and monolingual kids.
Researchers theorize that since bilinguals are constantly processing twice as much language at any given time, their brains are more agile. Even when tasks have nothing to do with language, bilinguals still routinely out-perform monolinguals at handling two or more tasks at once.
Learning another language is one of the most effective and practical ways to increase intelligence, keep your mind sharp, and buffer your brain against aging.