SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.<\/p>\n
This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child\u2019s academic and intellectual development.<\/p>\n
They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual\u2019s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn\u2019t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles\u2026.<\/p>\n
The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain\u2019s so-called executive function \u2014 a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind \u2014 like remembering a sequence of directions while driving\u2026.<\/p>\n
The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. \u201cBilinguals have to switch languages quite often \u2014 you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,\u201d says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompea Fabra in Spain. \u201cIt requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.\u201d In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.<\/p>\n
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From\u00a0 YUDHIJIT BHATTACHARJEE: SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"yoast_head":"\n
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