The researchers found that bilingual children performed better than monolingual children in working memory tasks. Indeed, the more complex the tasks the better their performance.
A recent comprehensive meta-analysis by Grundy and Timmer (Reference Grundy and Timmer2017), which was based on 88 effect sizes, 27 independent studies, and 2901 participants, provided evidence that bilinguals have a greater STM/WM capacity than monolinguals, reporting a significant small to medium population effect ...
For instance, Bialystok et al. (2004) compared bilingual and monolingual adults (aged 30–80) in three different studies using a non-verbal Simon task. Overall, bilinguals outperformed monolinguals when WM demands were high, and the extent of the difference was proportional to age.
7 Bilingual children are also able to make new friends and create strong relationships using their second language—an important skill in our increasingly diverse society. Research has found that babies raised in bilingual households show better self-control,8 a key indicator of school success.
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.
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.
Summary: Speaking more than one language does not improve a person's general mental ability. However, while there is no cognitive advantage to being bilingual, there are broader social and lifestyle benefits that come from speaking multiple languages.
Research overwhelmingly supports teaching second languages early, because as we know it's harder to learn a second language as we get older. But when kids are very young — from birth to about three years old — they are very ripe for receiving new information.
Researchers found that young adults who knew two languages performed better on attention tests and had better concentration compared to those who only spoke one language. They also respond faster or more accurately than their monolingual peers, according to Kapa and Colombo, 2013.
Bilingualism, or the ability to speak two or more languages, has been found to have a significant impact on academic achievement. Numerous studies have shown that bilingualism can improve cognitive skills, enhance problem-solving abilities, and increase academic performance in a variety of subjects.
“Overall, bilinguals have developed different brain regions to perform tasks than the ones used by monolinguals,” Bialystok sums up. What remains a mystery is how these changes in brain 'wiring' improve the performance and cognitive reserve of people who speak two 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.
Bilingualism strengthens cognitive abilities - bilingual people tend to be more creative and flexible. They can be more open-minded, and they also find it easier to focus on a variety of tasks simultaneously.
Evidence from previous studies suggests that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve because bilinguals manifest the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (AD) up to 5 years later than monolinguals.
A more powerful memory
Studying a language engages memorization skills (learning new words and rules) as well as recall (producing new language in-class activities). So it's no surprise that people who regularly use a second language have more powerful memories.
The answer, experts say, seems to be yes, no and it's complicated. For some people, genes may prime the brain to be good at language learning, according to some new research. And studies are just starting to pinpoint a few brain regions that are extra-large or extra-efficient in people who excel at languages.
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. There are also social benefits from being bilingual.
The brain uses a shared mechanism for combining words from a single language and for combining words from two different languages, indicating that language switching is natural for those who are bilingual.
Bilingual learning has been shown to be associated with higher cognitive flexibility (Bialystok and Senman, 2004). Cognitive flexibility refers to an individual's ability to switch between different task states and mental stereotypes (Miyake et al., 2000).
What we know is that children can learn multiple languages at once, and the benefits of being bilingual are endless. Learning multiple languages from birth is not a new phenomenon either. In fact, raising multilingual children is more common than most people think.
It's a question I'm asked a lot by mamas in our Cultured Home crew. The super-quick answer? Kids (including toddlers) can learn to speak multiple languages at the same time. 2, 3, 4….or more languages at once.
Late bilingualism – refers to bilingualism when the second language is learned after the age of 6 or 7; especially when it is learned in adolescence or adulthood.
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.
Research has also shown a positive correlation between bilingualism and cognitive development, especially executive function. Bilingualism supports skills that are specific to executive function: careful attention to the target language, suppressing the non-target language and effectively switching between languages.