AFA 2013

TEXT II

Why Bilinguals Are Smarter

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

[5]  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 protecting from dementia in old age.

[10]  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 delayed a child’s

[15]  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

[20]  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

[25]  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

[30]  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

[35]  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.

[40]  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

[45]  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.

[50]  Why does the fight between two simultaneously

active language systems improve these aspects of

cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the

bilingual advantage was centered primarily in an ability

for inhibition that was improved by the exercise of

[55]  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

[60]  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 bilingual experience appears to influence the

brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to

[65]  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

[70]  birth were compared with peers raised with one

language. In an initial set of tests, the infants were

presented with an audio stimulus 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

[75]  the puppet. But in a later set of tests, 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.

[80]  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 —

[85]  measured through a comparative evaluation of

proficiency in each language — were more resistant than

others to the beginning of dementia and other symptoms

of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of

bilingualism, the later the age of occurrence.

[90]  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?

Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefitsof- bilingualism.html