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[johnslat]

By 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 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.

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�s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual�s 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�t 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.

Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins � one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.

In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.

The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain�s so-called executive function � 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 � like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.

Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.

The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. �Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often � you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,� says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. �It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.� 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.

The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).

In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, 7-month-old babies exposed to two languages from birth were compared with peers raised with one language. In an initial set of trials, the infants were presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.

Bilingualism�s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism � measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language � were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer�s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.

Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint?"

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a staff writer at Science.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html

[johntpartee]

Some people have a knack for languages, some don't. Idiot savants have a specialized gift, too.

This isn't total sarcasm.

I was teaching at a language school in Mexico. Shortly after I arrived they hired a French teacher. He was born and raised in Canada in a bilingual household and was 100% fluent in both languages. He had come to Mexico about three years before and married a local and was fluent in Spanish as well. This individual was so incredibly STUPID that I couldn't stand to be in his presence; he made my skin crawl. He had adopted a wise-guy aggressive demeanor to compensate and kept people off balance by launching into one of his rehearsed routines when they caught on to his act.

I think I understand what the writer is talking about, though; it's what I've seen referred to as "precision of thought". A different way of thinking. The same way that mathematics develops a "different" set of reasoning and cognitive skills.

[hippocampus]

Speaking two languages is all very well and good, but should we not discuss the benefits of being able to speak a language first? Let's take things in their proper order, shall we?

[Sashadroogie]

What are read and blue squares?

[EFLeducator]

Being bilingual does NOT make one smarter.

[johnslat]

Dear EFLeducator,

Ah, but maybe being smarter makes one bilingual. .

Besides, you're bilingual: English and Bizarro.

Regards,
John

[Zero]

I think it's liberal claptrap. And, for the record, I am both bilingual and liberal. But I don't think it makes people smarter. It's just an in-vogue line of thought at the moment.

[MotherF]

Have you read any of the articles that have come out?
I think that smarter in these articles really means--work their brains more and differently than monolinguals. Which is not really what most of us think of when he hear the word smart.
You could still be an idiot with a lot of brain power.

[spiral78]

There is actually a great deal of research that indicates bilingualism is good for brain function (making one 'smarter') and the benefits extend all the way to a demonstrated delay of dementia in old age.

There are a lot of reputable sources yielded on the topic with even just a cursory search.

Here is just a very little bit in addition to johnslat's original post:

[johntpartee]

[spiral78]

Children in Czech/English households can easily exploit the languages. 'Ano' means 'yes' in Czech, and is often abbreviated in normal speech to 'no.'

[johntpartee]

I think "no" is universal. Literally.

[spiral78]

[johntpartee]

Yes, even BEMs will understand "no".

[Isla Guapa]

This is fascinating stuff. For someone like me who is proficient in a second language but not bilingual, I wonder what this research can tell me about how my brain functions as compared to brains of monolinguals.