Summary

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March 17,20.l2

I1FV Bilinguals Are Smarter By YUDHlJlTBH4freCftenlee , . SPEAKING two langrrages rather than just ong has obvious practical benefits iu ao io"r.""iogly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the.advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to couverse with a wider range of people.geing bilingual, it turns ou! makes yor.rn** ." **;

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Thrs vrew ofbilingualism is remarkably ddereut framthe understanding o.f bilingualism through much of the zoth century. Researchers, educators and policy makers loug considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that.hindered a childt acadrmic and intelldctual development

They were not wrong about the iuterfe:ence: there is ample evidence that in a biliugual,s braiu both language systems are active eyen when he is usiug only one langqage, ttrus creatiog rrtu"tioos t;;";;;;;";;" But this interference, researrhers are finding ou! isn,t so much a handicap as a blessiry i" ;;;;. ;;;;:;; to resolve internalconflict, giving the mind a workout that sfengtheus its cognitive **r"r.

Bilinguals, for inslance, seem to be more adept.thari monolinguals at sohing certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2oo4 studybythe psychologists Ellen Bialystokand fUicneUe Uartin-Rhee, biliugual atrd rnoootiog; p*schoo;* were asked to sort blue circles ani red squares presented on a computer screen ioto t,ro aigita Uitr; _ ;;; ;;;;- with ablue square andthe other markedwith a red circle.

Iu the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles iu the biu marked with the blue square and red squares iu the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did rhis with c"*n;; ;";;:;" children were askedto sortbyshape, which was more challengingbecause itrequiredpl".a;;;;;;;;;il- marked with a conflicting color. Ihe bilinguals were quicker at performiugitrislasL

the collective evidence from a uumber of such studies suggests that the blingualeJTFli"rce impmves the brain,s so_ called e<e'cutive function - a commaud systu- *ua Uro* *" ,*r.r,r.r' n".,o"*^o"* *rr *"ffi pr_ob_lems and performing various other mentally demandiat3asls. thu." p-""rrU, il"" ,*;;;;;;;; stay focused, switching attention wilhrlly frompne +hing to another and holding information iu mind _ Iike rememberiug a sequence of directions while driving.

Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active languate systems improve these aspects of cogrition? Until recentlS researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for l.nftlbrtion that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression-, it was thought, would help train the biliugual i,

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mind to ignore distractions in other contoGs. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since

studies have shown that biliuguals perfonn better than monolinguals even at tasks tlat do not require inhibition, Iike threading a line through an ascendiug series ofnumbers scattered randomly on a page.

Biliufualism's effects also extend into the twilight years. Iu a recent stu y of 44 elderly Spauish-English biliuguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals

with a higher degrte of biliugualism - measured 'lrough a comparative evaluation of proficieucy iu each language - were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and ottrer symptoms of Alzheimer,s disease: the higher the

degree of bilingualism, the laterthe age of onset

Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would. have imagiued that the words we hear and the sentences

we speak might be leaviug zuch a deep imprint?

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a staffwriter at Science.

This articb has been revised. to refuct the follouing correction:

Cortectiott: Mareh zg, zotz

The Gray Matter column on bilingaalism last Sunday misspelled the name of a uniuersity m Sparn. It u pompeu

Fabr a, not P omp ea Fabr a.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-ol-bilinguo!ism.html?_r=2&src=me&reFgenerol

The key difference beh,veen bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: Abeighteued-abili*+o+ranitoethe

'Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often - you may talk to your fatler in one lauguage and to your mother in another langUag€," 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 mouitor 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 efEcient at it.

The bilingual experieuce appears to influence the brain from iufancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who leam a second language [ater in life),

In a zoog study led by Agnes Kovacs of the Interuational School for Advauced 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 preseuted with an audio cue and tlen showu a puppet ou oue side of a screen. Both iufant groups learned to look at that side ofthe screen in anticipation ofthe puppet But in a later set oftrials, when the puppet begqn appearing on ttre 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.

l. Answer the following questions lN YOUR OWN WORDS (do NOT copy) t. ls the current view of bilingualism the same as in the past?

2. What can bilinguals do better than monolinguals? Give examples from the article'

3. What is the executive function in the brain?

4. What is inhibition? How does it relate to bilingualism?

5. What appears to be the most significant difference between bilinguals and monolinguals?

6.When do the benefits of bilingualism appear? How long do they last?

ll. lN YOUR OWN WORDS, write a summary of this article'