Why bilinguals are smarter essay

Bilingual influences are maybe the most rich experience you can get in your life, hence being able to understand two or three language is more than just beneficial. If you are monolingual, you are missing the opportunity of developing even more as an individual in the society. Bilingual or multilingual people have the benefice of understanding and speaking more than two languages and nowadays we can see this function growing tremendously. In this video appears Cheryl Jackson, the presenter of the program, Ellen Bialystok, a research professor of psychology at York University and her studies are specialized in multilinguism, Lauren-Ann Petitto, a professor of psychology at the university of Toronto whose studies are about the language acquisition.

Even though one can deviate from the main language spoken, bilingualism does improve brain functioning, because your brain has to work harder to understand two languages simultaneously. This keeps the mind fresh, it requires the ability to switch from one language to another without losing detail of what topic is being spoken about, and it forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, which in turn works out the brain and strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilingualism would definitely fall within. A person who speaks more than one language can experience multiple personalities, visions and reflections consisting which language is he speaking. High School students should comprehend the real benefit of speaking a foreign language.

Being a multilingual myself and speaking fluently. Some scientists have found that learning a second language can develop human intelligence.

They believe and have proven that learning a second language offers remarkable benefits for our brains: increased flexibility and improved cognition.

Bilingual or multilingual people have a clear, substantial mental advantage over what the public thinks. The conclusion from the study was that the two languages contributed to the enhancement of the cognitive control system for bilinguals. Despite the implication of the cognitive abilities as established in the Kovacs and Mehler study , there are domain-specific tasks monolinguals are generally better at.

This could be an indication of systematic deficiency of bilinguals. In terms of the receptive vocabulary, both the bilingual adults and children have been found to control smaller vocabulary compared to monolinguals; for instance, in a task that involves naming pictures, the former were found to be slower and were not as accurate as the latter Bialystok et al.

These are factors of neuropsychological measure of how the brain functions. However, this pattern of the brain function among monolinguals is contrasted by the abilities of bilinguals in the executive control if the children match based on different background factors. According to Bialystok, executive control is composed of a set of cognitive skills 4. Studies related to increased cognitive performance of bilinguals in solving conflicting tasks better than monolinguals were also established in a study conducted by Byers-Heinlein and Lew Williams In the study, 8 years old children were involved in different nonverbal task were to solve.

Some task included perceptual distraction and other did not have any form of interference. The results of the study were twofold: where there was no perceptual interference, the results were comparable; however, in task where distraction was introduced, bilinguals performed better than monolinguals.

There are also other studies that have shown that bilinguals are better off than monolinguals in tasks that are relatively difficult.

For example, in directional Simon Task, bilinguals have been found to outperform monolinguals when there are elements of increased monitoring and switching than in cases where there are simpler conditions Bialystok et al.

From the literature review, it can be inferred that there are differences in the cognitive abilities between monolinguals and bilinguals. Also, it has been shown that in the issues that require executive controls, bilinguals tend to outperform monolinguals. This is the case for both adults and children aged 7 months and more. This body of knowledge brings a new perspective on cognitive abilities associated with bilinguals and sets the ground for more researches and data synthesss in tasks involving monolinguals and bilinguals.

Most of the studies reviewed have focused on the task performance. However, for this, I will analyze the cognitive ability based on the dimension of attention. The executive function tested in this case is related to the various tasks that are associated to the general brain performance. However, for this paper, the focus is on how bilingualism affects the brain especially in the cortical regions that deal with the processing of the language functioning. The data was collected to test auditory sustained selective attention.

The data to be analyzed is retrieved from Krizman et al. See figure 1 below for the graphical representation of the data. The findings from the auditory test and the sustained selective attention showed that bilinguals had practical benefits in the sub-cortical representation of the fundamental sound frequency and in the attention abilities related with the strength of the frequency in the multitalker babble. In a quiet medium, the results were different.

This task was sound-based unlike the previous studies that have focused on the other activities. Nevertheless, the results are consistent with those of Bialystok et al. They depict bilinguals having some advantages over monolinguals in cases where the aspect of multitasking is introduced. The reasons for the benefits are scientific and relate to how different parts of the brain interpret meaning from either sound or task. The present findings add to the existing body of knowledge that associated bilinguals with some form of benefits in solving conflicting tasks and depicts the organization of the brain for the people who speak two languages.

There are logical explanations that are attributed to the brain organization of the bilinguals; the explanation is based on psycholinguistic studies that apply different tasks such as cross language priming. This is explained as the situation in which a word in one language can be used to facilitate the acquisition or retrieval of a semantically related word in another dialect.

For example, in a study that compared Italian-German bilinguals with purely Italian monolinguals, Mr. Costa found out that bilinguals performed better and with a lot of ease.

This showed that bilinguals were more efficient at what they were doing. This bilingual experience is proved to have an effect on the brain from birth to later years. The first one included babies of around 7-months who were exposed to two languages. The second group was of infants raised as monolinguals from their birth.

In the experiment, the babies were shown a puppet on one side of the screen with simultaneous audio cues. Both groups were able to look on the other side of the screen anticipating for the puppet. Next time, the puppet appeared on another side of the screen and here the bilingual infants were able to quickly gaze on the other side unlike the monolingual group. We use technologies, such as cookies, to customize content and advertising, to provide social media features and to analyse traffic to the site.

We also share information about your use of our site with our analytics partners. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.

Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website.

We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent.

You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.