An international team of researchers based in Singapore says the cognitive advantages of exposure to two languages are significant and reveal themselves early on, regardless of the languages spoken.
Inspired by the high proportion of Singaporean children being raised bilingually, they tested the cognitive abilities of 114 six-month-old babies by means of visual imaging and found they were able to recognise familiar images faster than their monolingual counterparts.
When presented with novel images, the bilingual babies paid more attention to the unknown than those being raised in monolingual homes
Can mixing languages in your mind help you learn both?
...
Those results show that translanguaging has a pretty spectacular effect on learning and long-term memory — and extend the "bilingual advantage" seen in executive functioning (the management of cognitive processes that control and regulate various abilities and behaviors) to the broader domain of learning.
Beyond simply helping people learn a second language, our findings suggest that translanguaging is a useful tool for learning, more generally. After all, bilingual education is not just about learning a new language — it's also about learning other subjects (such as history, geography and others) via a medium of two languages.
A new paper by a York University professor finds speaking more than one language has wide-ranging cognitive health benefits for children, adults and seniors.
Professor Ellen Bialystok and co-authors reviewed recent studies using behavioral and neuroimaging methods to examine the effects of bilingualism on cognition across the lifespan; their review builds on earlier evidence of its benefits for children’s cognitive development. The study is published today in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences. They found that bilingualism protects against cognitive decline by boosting cognitive reserve and delaying the onset of dementia symptoms. The review also suggests that the increasing diversity in world populations may have an unexpected positive impact on the resiliency of the adult brain.
“Our conclusion is that lifelong experience in managing attention to two languages reorganizes specific brain networks, creating a more effective basis for executive control and sustaining better cognitive performance throughout the lifespan,” says Ellen Bialystok, Distinguished Research Professor in York’s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Hea
SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. 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.
Published by the DesMoines Register, November15, 2011
[Iowa's Republican] Gov. Terry Branstad called dual-language competency for students a “great suggestion,” hailing the advantages bilingual workers have when looking for jobs at companies like Pioneer Hi-Bred, a crop genetics research and development company in Iowa.
Published in the Huffington Post, December 13, 2011
Students who learn a foreign language out-score their non-foreign language learning peers in the verbal and -- surprisingly, perhaps -- math sections of standardized tests....
People who are bilingual have an advantage over the rest of us, and not just in terms of communication skills. The bilingual brain develops more densely, giving it an advantage in various abilities and skills, according to new research.
Hispanic Heritage Month provides the perfect opportunity to explore how bilingual education positively or negatively affect our children.
Despite study after study showing that bilingual education benefits students and communities, budget cuts and xenophobia nationwide have led to many dual-language programs being cut in Florida, Texas and California.
Bilingual children score higher on some cognitive tests than children who speak only English, a new Toronto study found.
It's known that children who grow up speaking two languages tend to be slower in picking up each language than children raised speaking just one, but the study suggests the benefits of bilingualism outweigh any drawbacks.
Bilingual children develop a deeper understanding of the structure of language, an important skill for literacy, researchers from York University said in Wednesday's online issue of the journal Child Development.
"People always ask if the languages themselves matter and now we can definitively say no," study co-author, Prof. Ellen Bialystok, of York's psychology department said in a release.
Published by the Sens Public Review, October 17, 2011
The author analyses in a study the effects of linguistic skills on the export performance of German, French and Swedish SMEs. Contrary to popular belief, English does not suffice in economic relations as many tenders are lost through lack of skills in local languages.
"Research shows that once someone has learned a language other than their native tongue, it becomes increasingly easier to learn a third, fourth or fifth language."
Once, experts feared that young children exposed to more than one language would suffer “language confusion,” which might delay their speech development. Today, parents often are urged to capitalize on that early knack for acquiring language. Upscale schools market themselves with promises of deep immersion in Spanish — or Mandarin — for everyone, starting in kindergarten or even before.
Yet while many parents recognize the utility of a second language, families bringing up children in non-English-speaking households, or trying to juggle two languages at home, are often desperate for information. And while the study of bilingual development has refuted those early fears about confusion and delay, there aren’t many research-based guidelines about the very early years and the best strategies for producing a happily bilingual child.
But there is more and more research to draw on, reaching back to infancy and even to the womb. As the relatively new science of bilingualism pushes back to the origins of speech and language, scientists are teasing out the earliest differences between brains exposed to one language and brains exposed to two.
Bilingual children show greater cognitive flexibility and have an advantage over kids who speak only one language, according to University of Haifa researchers. The study found that children who speak two languages can easily learn a third, and can raise their IQ while doing so. Researchers also showed that those with Russian as a first language are more fluent in Hebrew compared to those who speak Hebrew as a mother tongue.
Published by the Cognitive Advantage, June 27, 2000
Unfortunately, the political battles concerning bilingual education have obscured important research demonstrating a link between balanced bilingualism, which involves becoming equally proficient in both languages, and cognitive gains—especially in terms of increased metalinguistic awareness.
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
