Name: Matt S

Posting Number: 3

Topic: Science

Title of Article: The benefits of Bilingualism

Author of Article: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

Publication Name: The New York Times Date of Publication: March 17th 2012

Length of Article: 932 Words / 3 Pages

In recent years scientists have begun to show that being bilingual has more advantages than just being able to communicate with a larger group of people. It has long been believed that bilingualism was an interference to one's cognitive skills, that it slowed down the thinking process; recently scientists have found out that it actually makes you "smarter". In a 2004 study by Psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, preschoolers were first asked to sort blue circles and red squares into the appropriate bins (blue squares and red circles) by color - both the group of the bilingual children and group of the not-bilingual children did this with relative ease. The second task was to sort the circles and squares into the bins by shape and not color; the bilingual children performed this task faster. This study and others like it show that the interference which comes from being bilingual actually improves your performance when doing conflicting tasks because alternating between the two (or more) languages you speak trains your brain to resolve "internal" conflict faster. Until recently Scientists believed that the bilingual advantages came from an ability for inhibition that was honed by suppressing one language system, meaning that it would let the brain ignore outside distractions; however, now it is shown that bilinguals preform better at tasks that do not require this inhibition. Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain, says that the key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals is more basic that this: that bilinguals have a heightened ability to monitor the environment because they are often forced to switch and process different languages on short notice. In a study that compared German-Italian Bilinguals and Italian Monolinguals, Costa found that the bilingual persons not only performed better, but they also did this with less activity in parts of the brain that are used to monitor the environment, showing that they are more efficient at it. In a 2009 Study led by Agnes Kovacs from the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste Italy, 2 groups of 7-month olds were subjected to a series of tests - one bilingual and one monolingual. A puppet would appear on one side of a screen and eventually the infants got used to this and began looking towards that side of the screen in anticipation of seeing the puppet. After a few rounds of this the side from which the puppet appeared was switched, the bilingual infants adapted to this first and quickly learned to switch their gaze to that side of the screen instead. Also, in a recent study conducted by Tamar Gollan of UCSD, it has been found that elderly individuals with a higher rating of bilingualism were less susceptible to early onsets of dementia.

Being bilingual has been thought to cause learning disabilities and cognitive impairment. However, the 3 recent studies show that being bilingual has immense positive psychological effects. A person who learns more than one language at an early age is both able to process on a higher level and avoid the negative cognitive impacts of old age. In addition to this, experts say that being bilingual lets your brain do these things not only faster, but also more efficiently. This comes to show just how important learning a second language is in school, or how necessary it is for parents to teach their children their native language.