The Source Of Enhanced Cognitive Control In Bilinguals

What do we know about the effects bilingualism has on cognitive development? Our world is becoming progressively bilingual; in the US 21% of school age children between the ages of 5-17 years old can speak other than English at home and this number is expected to increase in the coming years. On top of social reasons, the positive effects to the cognitive development of the brain when introduced to a second language are of many. The age of acquisition is vital due to the plasticity of the brain, which according to the critical period hypothesis, begins to level after five years of age. In addition to plasticity, bilingual speakers are more capable of focusing their attention to solve complex problems compared to monolingual speakers.

“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

Increased Ability for Conflict Resolution: Research shows that the constant switching between languages leads to very well trained conflict resolution capacity (through improved executive control), which leads to improved behavioral and cognitive functions. (Abutalebi, Guidi et al. 2015)

The ability to inhibit thoughts has effect on EF (executive functioning), and thus inhibit ability is increased in two-language children. It requires halting the thought process of one specific language. Through this, two-language children also seem to have an increased ability in focusing their attention, which could be due to the ability to inhibit outside, intrusive influence (such as their other language shining through their speech). They also can pick and choose one correct solution in a conflicting situation, again because of this inhibition practice. It is unknown what level of bilingualism is

Bilingualism is a person’s ability to speak two or more languages fluently. Initially it was believed that bilingualism had negative effects on an individual’s intelligence and speech and it was thought that the knowledge of multiple languages would complicate one’s thought processing rather than improve its functioning. This theory

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.

Cognitive development advances gradually during infancy. Bilingual infants have often been treated as a special population with unique advantages or disadvantages as compared to monolinguals. A recent collection of studies has demonstrated advantages in infants exposed to two languages, however the specificity of this advantage remains unclear (Singh et al., 2015; Brito & Barr, 2013). Although, one component such as memory can show a hallmark of an infant’s flexibility in development. Summarized in this paper are two studies in which researchers investigated whether or not bilingual infants have a cognitive advantage. With comparisons between monolinguals and bilinguals both studies reveal a bilingual advantage in cognitive control. The studies utilized two different methods, the visual habituation procedure and the deferred imitation of memory retrieval. Taken together, the studies evaluated how bilingualism may be correlated to a general enhancement of the cognitive control system.

When English is 'blocked', the bilinguals acted like typical Germans and saw ambiguous videos as more goal-oriented. With German blocked, bilingual subjects acted like English speakers and matched ambiguous and open-ended scenes. When they are surprised by switching the language of the distracting numbers halfway through the experiment, their focus on goals versus process switched right along with it.

Bilingualism is similar to juggling and playing video games in which it is intense and can be sustained over a long period of time like driving taxis. However, individuals who are bilingual were forced to be bilingual because of life circumstances and not because of interest. Studies have shown that the effect of bilingual education on cognition is mainly through the executive control. Bilingual individuals have an enhanced executive control and it can be seen throughout their life. Studies on this executive control has shown that bilingual individuals outperform the monolingual individuals. Behavioral studies and imaging studies have found that bilingual individuals have both languages active at all times.

It is important to recognize the neurological differences amongst monolingual and bilingual individuals. In the research community, many studies have been conducted to investigate the way both groups process language. Cross-linguistic development anatomically changes the structure of the brain that results in an enlarged

First of all, bilingual education has shown to be able to increase the attention span of students. For years it had been believed that, when learning two languages, students found themselves to become increasingly distracted and confused, unaware of which language to use in what moment. Today, however, scientists can see that that is far from the case. In fact, if a student

On the other hand bilingual individuals should have enhanced processes such as increased cognitive flexibility, inhibition along with increased competence in updating information in the working memory (Miyake et al., 2000; Bialystok, 2009). Multiple researches and studies have indicated bilingual children gain the ability to attend to new features and switch criteria for sorting decisions while ignoring misleading distraction from meaning, earlier than their monolinguals (Ben-Zeev, 1977, Bialystok, 1999; Bialystok, 2010; Bialystok & Martin, 2004). Additionally, bilingual children have been shown to perform significantly better than monolingual children on metalinguistic tasks that require controlled attention and inhibition (Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Bialystok, 2009; Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009; Kovács & Mehler, 2009 and Bonifacci, Giombini, Bellocchi, and Contento, 2011). That said, Bialystok, Craik, and Ruocco (2006) and Bialystok (2006) found that these differences were not as statistically noteworthy in undergraduate university students. This seems to indicate that the functions under discussion may only be significantly different during childhood hence the bilingual child may learn these functions earlier than the monolingual child.

The benefits of bilingualism is something that is well understood in the literature spawning the term, “the bilingual advantage,” which is supposed to encompass enhanced performance control as well as overall mental flexibility culminating in an overall slower decline in executive function as aging continues. Such claims are well supported by evidence from young to old in a multitude of studies spanning decades. What is just as well understood and researched but less often talked about are the negative effects of bilingualism on the brain. Second language acquisition, while potentially providing some benefits to memory and executive control, negatively impacts vocabulary size and linguistic recall tasks of bilinguals compared to monolinguals resulting in less language and verbal fluency.

“Studies over the last four decades have shown cognitive advantages in bilinguals. Bialystok and colleagues called this cognitive advantage executive control and they define it as ‘the set of cognitive skills based on limited cognitive resources for such functions as

Imagine one day, you are taking the train to school or work and you observe a female toddler speaking to her parent in a native tongue, and then to her sibling in English. You become perplexed by her ability to rapidly switch between languages, and begin to think of how this is possible. Language makes up an extraordinary part of human abilities and contributes greatly to the usage of different parts of our brain. Being a resident of New York City, most of us know at least five individuals who are either bilingual or multilingual. This ability to switch between languages and reconfigure the brain has always been fascinating, being that I am monolingual, and I have always been intrigued by this development. We know most of our friends and families are bilingual because someone in their immediate family speaks the native language fluently. According to Buchweitz et al, bilingualism is a “multi-dimensional human phenomenon” that can be studied by how often someone uses the language and their capacity to develop this skill (Buchweitz & Prat, 2013). The main issues that this paper will be focusing on are as follows: the effects of bilingualism on the functioning and structure of the brain in correlation to the different aspects of processing language in a neural network, and how age of acquisition can affect the proficiency of language. The structure of the brain helps us understand the “architecture of language networks”, while the function shows us how these networks are