By Tim Handorf

These days, attaining fluency in two or more languages looks fabulous on college and job applications and presents opportunities in numerous corners of life completely denied to the monolingual. Old or young, however, bilingual individuals enjoy some decidedly physiological rewards for their linguistic capabilities, which aren’t always immediately noticeable. Come to find out, the human body’s most important organ receives generous stimulation from soaking up multiple tongues as well. So before griping about that mandatory foreign language course, take a look at some of the most excellent things that could happen after mastering one.

Staves off dementia

Bilingual individuals with Alzheimer’s take twice as long to develop symptoms as their monolingual counterparts, and scientists at St. Michael’s Hospital believe a distinct correlation exists between language development and delayed dementia. However, the symptoms between both demographics remained equally destructive; the only difference lay in the amount of damage needed for them to materialize. The prevailing hypothesis regarding why this phenomenon occurs involves how the multilingual mind strengthens itself by switching between tongues, which bolsters brain function overall.

Improved cognitive skills

In general, the bilingual tend to enjoy far sharper cognitive skills, keeping the brain constantly active and alert even when only one language prevails. Studies conducted on preschoolers revealed that those capable of speaking multiple languages performed far better on sorting puzzles, both in speed and success. Their ability to strike a balance and switch between different “modes,” as it were, eased the transition between various tasks with swapped out goals. Categorizing shapes by color and form, specifically, even if the denoted form sports a different color than that of the bin.

Heightened creativity

Learning a new language as either a child or an adult greatly benefits those pursuing creative careers or hobbies. Even the more technical still get something amazing out of the bargain, however, as bilingualism still nurtures the “outside-the-box” thinking necessary for sharp problem solving and innovation. Numerous studies linking acumen in multiple languages and creativity exist, and this one by Texas Women’s University stands as one of the clearest, straightforward examples.

Easier time focusing on tasks

When presented with distractions, the bilingual individuals studied by York University maneuvered them more adroitly and displayed heightened concentration on their assignments than the monolingual. The specific languages spoken held no influence over this mental flexibility; anyone fluent in more than one tongue reaps these cognitive rewards. However, some evidence exists that knowing two or more with structural similarities to one another might offer up a slight advantage.

Greater control over literacy skills

York University also noted improvements in literacy and literacy skill acquisition in bilingual children. “Metalinguistic” abilities, which promote a more intimate understanding of verbal and non-verbal communication, receive the biggest boost here. Such abilities do come at cost on the front end, however, as language acquisition in multilingual individuals does progress at a slightly slower pace.

Heightened environmental awareness

University of Pompea Fabra researchers noted that their subjects fluent in one or more languages seem to express a much higher degree of environmental awareness. Essentially, this means their ability to process and “monitor” external stimuli sharpens alongside their verbal abilities. Because they must toggle between tongues, the bilingual’s brains come fine-tuned to pick up on subtleties and patterns both on and off the page.

Easier time switching between tasks

As many of these other studies have no doubt already proven, the bi- and multilingual out there can brag that their brains multitask like a dream. Obviously, this directly ties into their sharpened cognitive skills resulting from bouncing back and forth between languages; which they do even when they’re only using one daily. Being able to switch off distractions with greater aplomb than the monolingual certainly doesn’t hurt the mental gear shifting, either.

Denser grey matter

Most of the brain consists of gray matter, which is responsible for dictating intelligence, particularly when it comes to acquiring and processing language, dictating attention spans, and establishing and storing memories. The bilingual possess more gray matter at a higher density than monolingual counterparts, and a team from Wellcome Department of Imaging and Neuroscience noted that the left hemisphere enjoyed more nervous loving than the right, thought the latter certainly doesn’t get left out of the festivities. Seeing as how the left side impacts language skills, it makes perfect sense that it’d come out a little thicker in the end.

Faster response time

When learning more about bilingualism and the brain, York University researchers noted that individuals who spoke both English and Tamil answered questions faster than those only fluent in the former. Understandable, considering how multilingualism acts as a sort of cognitive steroid dialing up the brain’s Six Million Dollar Man potential. Scientists tested the phenomenon using a series of non-verbal reasoning questions between groups of similarly-educated individuals from more or less homogenous backgrounds.

Higher scores on intelligence tests

Crush together the swelling creativity, greater multitasking, generous environmental awareness, and other hallmarks of bilingualism and it probably comes as little surprise that speakers typically score higher on intelligence tests. Studies conducted in 1974 and 1986 dissected the phenomenon using both verbal and non-verbal measures. Everything seems to boil down to “greater intellectual flexibility” in general, with the language centers of the brain receiving an all-around power up the more a thinker engages with different tongues.

Article reference source from Best Colleges Online

By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee Staff Writer, Science

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.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins – one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.

In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.

The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function – a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind – like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.

Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.

The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often – you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.” In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.

The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).

In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, 7-month-old babies exposed to two languages from birth were compared with peers raised with one language. In an initial set of trials, the infants were presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.

Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism – measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language – were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.

Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint?

Article reference source from The New York Times.