According to a new study, adults who grew up speaking two different languages can switch their attention between different tasks faster than those who adopt a second language later in life. This is just one of the many cognitive benefits of bilingualism.
Research has shown that bilingual children constantly switch between two languages in the brain, which increases “cognitive flexibility”, the ability to switch between thinking about different concepts or multiple concepts simultaneously and “selective attention skills”, the mental process of focusing on one task or object in a row.
Other studies have shown that bilingual children can complete mental puzzles faster and more efficiently than those who speak a single 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 a brain workout.
In the new study, bilingual adults participated in an experiment that involved viewing images on a screen that gradually changed and observed the changes. Adults who began to speak a second language in childhood were able to notice changes much faster than those who learned another language later in life.
Bilingual children need to “take advantage of multiple 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 psychology at the University of England Ruskin said in a statement.
“Children in bilingual homes adapt to their more complex language environment by taking samples from their visual environment and placing more weight on new information,” the study authors wrote.
When children learn a second language at an early age (between 0 and 3 years), their brain is more plastic, which makes it easier.
It is significant that the mental benefits of starting a new language early seem to last even as children grow up, D’Souza said in a statement.
If you are monolingual, but hope to teach your children another language, there are ways to introduce it into your home. For example, singing and listening to music in another language, watching TV shows in educational languages and taking language classes are all opportunities to introduce children to other languages, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
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