According to a new study, adults who grew up speaking two different languages can switch their attention between different tasks more quickly than those who take a second language later in life. This is just one of the many cognitive benefits of being bilingual.
Research has shown that bilingual children constantly switch from two languages to the brain, which increases “cognitive flexibility,” the ability to switch between thinking different concepts or multiple concepts at once, and “selective attention skills,” the mental process of concentration on one task or object at a time.
Other studies have shown that bilingual children can complete mental puzzles more quickly and effectively than those who only speak 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 a workout for the brain.
In the new study, bilingual adults participated in an experiment that required viewing images on a screen that was gradually scrolling and recording changes. Adults who began speaking a second language as a child were able to notice the changes much more quickly than those who learned another language later in life.
Bilingual children should “take advantage of multiple sources of visual information, such as mouth movements, facial expressions, and subtle gestures,” when they are raised in a more complex language environment, Dean D’Souza, author of the study and University psychology professor Anglia Ruskin said in a statement.
“Babies in bilingual households adapt to their more complex language environment by showing more of their visual environment and giving more weight to new information,” the study authors wrote.
When children learn a second language at an early age (0-3 years), their brain is more plastic, which makes it easier.
Significantly, the mental benefits of starting a new language seem to last even as children grow into 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 in your home. For example, singing and listening to music in another language, watching television programs in educational languages, and taking language classes are opportunities to introduce children to other languages, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
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