Adults who grew up speaking two different languages can shift their attention between different tasks more quickly than those who learned a second language later in life, according to a new study. This is just one of the many cognitive benefits of being bilingual.
Research has shown that bilingual children are constantly switching between two languages in their brains, which increases “cognitive flexibility”, the ability to switch between thinking about different concepts or multiple concepts at the same time and “selective attention skills”, the process mental focus on one task or object at a time.
Other studies have shown that bilingual children can solve mental puzzles more quickly and efficiently than those who speak only one language. The reason? Speaking two languages requires “executive functioning”, which are higher-level cognitive skills, such as planning, decision making, problem solving and organization. Basically, this task is brain training.
In the new study, bilingual adults participated in an experiment that required watching images on a screen that gradually changed and watching the changes. Adults who started speaking a second language as children were able to notice changes much more quickly than those who learned another language later in life.
Bilingual children need to “take advantage of various sources of visual information, such as mouth movements, facial expressions and subtle gestures”, when raised in a more complex language environment, Dean D’Souza, study author and professor of psychology in Anglia Ruskin University said in a statement.
“Babies in bilingual homes adapt to their more complex language environment, experiencing more of their visual environment and putting more weight on new information,” wrote the study’s authors.
When children learn a second language at a young age (between 0 and 3 years old), their brains are more plastic, which makes it easier.
It is significant that the mental benefits of starting a new language early appear to last even when children reach adulthood, D’Souza said in the statement.
If you are monolingual, but want to teach your children another language, there are ways to introduce it at home. For example, singing and listening to music in another language, watching educational programs on TV and taking language classes are opportunities to introduce children to other languages, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
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