The Real Benefits Of A Bilingual Brain

Dr. Mia Nacamulli klarigas al ni la tri tipojn de dulingva cerbo, kaj kion ĉiu signifas por nia cerbsano:

2+ languages, 3+ ways

Cognitively speaking, there are at least 3 types of bilingualism:

• Compound bilinguals learn two languages simultaneously with a shared conceptual framework
• Coordinate bilinguals develop separate conceptual systems for each language
• Subordinate bilinguals learn a second language through the filter of their first language

…of course, this is the simplistic approach, presented here because there’s only so much that can be included in a TED video, but you’ve probably already noticed that it can get more complicated if we do such things as:

• know more than two languages in total
• learn a third language through a second language
  • usually abbreviated in the field to L3 and L2, respectively, and this enumeration counts regardless of how many languages are known in total. For example, an English native speaker (L1) learns French (L2), German (L2), and Spanish (L2), and then learns Catalan from Spanish (not from their native English), because there are more learning resources available from Spanish and also it’s much closer to Spanish than it is to English, then Catalan becomes their L3, notwithstanding that it is the 5th language our hypothetical polyglot has learned.
• knowing languages that use largely distinct parts of the brain (for example, a person who has never had a functioning sense of hearing who learns sign language will not be anchoring words learned to sounds as a hearing person might, and also will be using visual and motor skills in a way quite different from vocally spoken languages).

Fun fact: this latter is also somewhat true of written vs spoken language. For example, this writer (it’s me, hi) wrote all of the above while having lines from a catchy non-English pop song stuck on repeat in her brain. Likely it being a different language helped it to not interfere with my writing, but the main difference is that processing spoken vs written language uses largely different mental faculties, especially if there is mental “buffering” going on. For example, if you write often enough to have muscle memory that facilitates quite flowing typing, you can probably continue writing a sentence you’re already writing, while responding verbally to the question of someone in the same room as you, at the same time, even if they are in the same language.

Next, a note about the “critical period” hypothesis that proposes that learning second languages is easier for children:

• on the one hand, children can learn languages more easily than adults because their developing brains remain highly plastic and can recruit both hemispheres for language acquisition, whereas adult language processing is usually more lateralized to the left hemisphere.
• on the other hand, adults can learn languages more easily than children because language-learning is mostly about connecting new ideas to existing ideas, and we adults simply have a lot more available connections, due to having built up countless ones already over the course of our life to date*

*Exponentially so if we know more languages already, but this still holds true even if you only know one language. So for example a child may learn the word “cup” in another language and be better neurologically equipped to store this new information in terms of hardware (wetware?), but an adult will have encountered countless more instances of the word and the idea to which to attach it.

Put in metaphorical terms:

• a child encounters the word “cup” and puts it in their room and it’s easy to find because their room has not many things in it and everything is visible. It’s a simple system that works, but it’s going to reach its limit in the not-too-distant future.
• an adult encounters the word “cup” and puts it in our vast, well-indexed library, where we can find it again later by any one of about six different methods, any one of which should be sufficient. A catalogue, the Dewey system, a big sign that says “here it is”, the way things have been organized by genre and alphabet, etc etc etc.

And more languages, instead of being more things to remember, just means there are more pointers available to find the meaning of anything.

There are some consequential differences between childhood and adult learners: learning a language during childhood can lead to a deeper understanding of social and emotional nuances, while adults using a second language often show reduced emotional bias and more rational decision-making when operating in that language.

So, different bonuses for different methods!

Some neurological benefits are available to all language learners:

• Structural brain changes: multilingualism is associated with greater gray matter density, which contains most of the brain’s neurons and synapses, and increased activity in certain brain regions when using additional languages.
• Executive function advantages: switching between languages requires attention and mental control, increasing activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region involved in problem-solving, task switching, concentration, and filtering irrelevant information.
• Brain health benefits: the lifelong mental demands of managing multiple languages can help delay the onset of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and dementia by as much as five years.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like:

Language Fluency Beats General Intelligence & Memory For Longevity

Take care!