Bilingual Advantages In Executive Function

Bilingualism itself can be held responsible for increased levels of executive control and higher brain plasticity. In order to maintain a balance between two languages, the bilingual brain depends on executive functions, a monitoring system of general cognitive abilities that includes processes such as attention and inhibition. Laurent et. al 2010 aimed to determine bilingual experience enhances the development of phonological awareness. Children were exposed to early learning of a second language between the school grades 3-5 in primary school, ages ranging from 8 to 10 years old. The goal of this study was to promote the concept of “bilingual advantage” (Laurent, 2010) as researchers measured exactly how long children required second language exposure in order to influence phonological awareness. These researchers expected that after 4 years

In many studies, bilingual learners' brain can have better attentiveness and the ability to switch tasks than a mono-lingual learner’s brain because of their cognitive ability to control to suppress one language while using another language or switch from one language to another language simultaneously. Bilingualism also positively affects learners' academic progress (Saer, D. J. 1923).

Over the past several decades, cognitive psychology researchers have suggested that different types of cognitive and behavioral experiences can change the structure and function of a learner's brain over time. In an article in the Journal of Cognitive Psychology, Ellen Bialystok (University of York) presented bilingualism as an experience that could have a significant impact on long-term neurology and cognitive development and function.However, it was somewhat difficult to prove the specific correlation that the effects of bilingualism actually have on brain function. The study of the effects of bilingualism on cognitive development analyzes only several measurable structural and cognitive effects of bilingualism, based on a component perspective. This approach, however, presented an overly brief understanding of bilingual mental and brain structures and the lack of an accurate analysis of widely reconstructed structures that arise from many contextual factors that lead to complex changes in function.

Many studies look into the idea of executive control. Executive control is the ability to control tasks involving inhibition, attention, and conflict or even broader, anything that requires effortful selection (Clare et al., 2014; & Bialystok, 2011). This ability develops late in cognitive development and declines with age (Bialystok et al., 2012). Researchers hypothesize that bilingual individuals have a continually activated executive control system as there are two competing languages that must be selected from based on the social context. Due to the joint activation of two languages, there is an attention struggle that is not present in monolingual individuals or bimodal

While some may think that this is not certain studies have proven otherwise. In The Power of a Bilingual Brain, Jeffery Kluger states that, “Research is increasingly showing that the brains of people who know two or more languages….. Multilingual people, studies show, are better at reasoning, at multitasking, at grasping and reconciling conflicting ideas.”(1) Clearly, a bilingual education places students a step ahead not only in their education careers but, as well as in their daily life’s outside school. Jeffery Kluger discusses how a bilingual brain is not necessarily smarter brain, but is a more flexible and practical brain. Evidently, demonstrating to us one of the many benefits of a bilingual

“Cognitive functions can be defined as cerebral activities that lead to knowledge, encompass reasoning, memory, attention, and language that leads directly to the attainment of information and, thus, knowledge” (What are cognitive functions). Many students at Doulos are unaware of the benefits of knowing two languages. Ironically students also don’t know that their own brain and its skills are improving because of their second language. Doulos teaches classes throughout the whole day in both English and Spanish. Students are regularly changing between languages and their brain is always active with both languages. “This constant practice strengthens the control mechanisms and changes the associated brain regions” (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). People who are bilingual are capable of switching between tasks more efficiently. “For example, when bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by color (red or green) to categorizing them by shape, they do so more rapidly than monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when changing strategies on the fly” (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). Students’ cognitive and sensory process skills are more developed due to being bilingual (Marian, Viorica, and Anthony Shook). These improvements allow students to better process and understand information in different environments, thus leading to better

al., 2010). While individuals with ADHD may be hindered in working memory, bilinguals are noted to have better executive skills and thus better working memory. According to the article, "Effects of classroom bilingualism on task-shifting, verbal memory, and word learning in children", bilingual individuals outperform monolingual individuals on tasks involving verbal working memory (Kaushanskaya et al., 2014). Moreover, it is shown that bilingual performance relative to monolinguals increases with more difficult tasks. These results were interpreted that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals in these tasks because bilinguals may have a greater executive functioning , specifically controlling attention, than monolinguals. As proposed in "Bilingual brain training: A neurobiological framework of how bilingual experience improves executive function", bilingual practice enhance the key functions of the basal ganglia- "the capacity of selecting the appropriate rules in response to very specific conditions, and the capacity of overriding habitual responses encoded within cortico-cortical connections" (Stocco,

In an article called “Being Bilingual Makes You Smarter” it states that “the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function,a command system that directs the attention processes

The United States of America (U.S.) is a nation built of immigrants. These immigrants brought many diverse languages to the U.S.. The major languages of the U.S. besides English consist of Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, French, Vietnamese, German, and Korean. Although Multilingualism or bilingualism is uncommon in the U.S., it is common in other countries. Multilingualism or bilingualism people appear to acquire knowledge faster and have superior executive functions (Diamond). This concept was discussed in class and proves that learning another language can be extremely beneficial. Spanish is a great second language to learn due to the fact that it is the nations second most used language in the U.S.. The importance of Spanish-speaking is

I., Grady, C., Chau, W., Ishii, R., Gunji, A., & Pantev, C. (2005). Effect of bilingualism on cognitive control in the Simon task: evidence from MEG. NeuroImage, 24(1), 40-49.

Valian believes that while bilingualism is only one of the factors that may boost cognitive functioning and that data from children and young adults are currently inconclusive, a bilingual advantage seems to be present among older people. Indeed, as Valian (2014a) suggests, studying younger individuals is difficult per se because they are exposed to so many other activities that may enhance executive function. There are currently very few studies on bilingualism in the aging

This investigation discusses the question of “Is the brain organized differently in bilingual individuals?”. This question was brought upon living in a bilingual community at school, with both Arabic and English speakers. This essay will demonstrate the brain imaging techniques used to differentiate the monolingual brain from a bilingual brain, research studies, and the positive and negative outcomes toward a bilingual brain. Language constructs our relationship with the world arounds us in the ways we express ourselves, therefore what does it mean to be bilingual and monolingual? Bilingualism refers to an individual’s ability to speak two or more languages fluently even if one language is learned later on in life. However, monolinguals are

Marian and Shook (2012) described how research has shown that a fluent bilingual or multilingual person has greater executive brain function. This has been shown using fMRI technology. The authors provide evidence that the increased executive function is related to the necessity of the bilingual individual to control which language the brain focuses on. The attention and inhibition areas of the brain are activated to perform this process. With greater executive function, bilinguals perform better on conflict management tasks, such as those presented in Stroop Task.

The regular need to select a target language is argued to enhance executive control. We investigated whether this enhancement stems from a general effect of bilingualism (the representation of two languages) or from a modality constraint that forces language selection. Bimodal bilinguals can, but do not always, sign and speak at the same time. Their two languages involve distinct motor and perceptual systems, leading to weaker demands on language control. We compared the performance of 15 monolinguals, 15 bimodal bilinguals, and 15 unimodal bilinguals on a set of flanker tasks. There were no group differences in accuracy, but unimodal bilinguals were faster than the other groups; bimodal bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals. These results trace the bilingual advantage in cognitive control to the unimodal bilinguals experience controlling two languages in the same

I found an artcle on hufflingtonpost that talks about the benefits of being bilingual. The article states that people who speak multiply laguages have a higher level of mental flexibility than people who only speak one language. In the past bilnguals were looked down on. When you're swichting languages all the time, it strengthens your mental muscle and your executive function becomes enrached. There was an experiement performed on both spanish and english speakers to see if both lagunages were active in their minds at all time. At first the subjects 512 sentences in either english or spanish, switch between the two every two sentence. They had to read cognates out load in red as quicky as possible. The results show bilnguals rarely said a