Why Bilinguals Are Smarter

[Char_Azn]

SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.

In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.

The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function — a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind — like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.

Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.

The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” 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 monitor 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 efficient at it.

The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).

In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced 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 presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the 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.

Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.

Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?src=me&ref=general

We are smarter then the average Ang Moh

 

[tonychat]

i disagree, sinkies are still stupid.

and their stupidity are further enhanced by their ball-less-ness.

0ne fine example is this guy:

 

[Sir_Fcuk]

We are smarter then the average Ang Moh

Few Sinkies are truly bilingual. Even Vickram can't really figure out whether to use a pseudo british accent or wayang Singlish accent in Parliament.

A true bilingual are some first generation Chinese americans who moved there when they are 12 or 13 years old - speak fluent chinese, at the same time perfect english. Singaporeans have this horrid hokkein clang to the language that is at best seen as second rate in the western world.

A good example of a true bilingual is Chen Show Mao. Compare him, for example, with LHL.... see the difference?

 

[tonychat]

Few Sinkies are truly bilingual. Even Vickram can't really figure out whether to use a pseudo british accent or wayang Singlish accent in Parliament.

A true bilingual are some first generation Chinese americans who moved there when they are 12 or 13 years old - speak fluent chinese, at the same time perfect english. Singaporeans have this horrid hokkein clang to the language that is at best seen as second rate in the western world.

A good example of a true bilingual is Chen Show Mao. Compare him, for example, with LHL.... see the difference?

That makes sense on my observation of sinkies are stupid... i am right again.. and proven right again.

 

[Char_Azn]

Few Sinkies are truly bilingual. Even Vickram can't really figure out whether to use a pseudo british accent or wayang Singlish accent in Parliament.

A true bilingual are some first generation Chinese americans who moved there
when they are 12 or 13 years old - speak fluent chinese, at the same time perfect english. Singaporeans have this horrid hokkein clang to the language that is at best seen as second rate in the western world.

A good example of a true bilingual is Chen Show Mao. Compare him, for example, with LHL.... see the difference?

yes csm speaks English with a chink accent and Chinese like he is a true blue China man while lhl speaks local English and speaks Chinese like an ang moh.

If you read the article it did state that the level of intelligence scales up according to level of proficiency of bilingualism

 

[Raiders]

Billingual smart? I can speak 6 languages, am I a genius?

English
Mandarin
Vietnamese
Hokkien
Foul Language KNNBCCB
Body Language

 

[BuiKia]

Then I must be very smart too...

English
Mandarin
Malay
Hokkien
Teochew
Thai
Cantonese

Billingual smart? I can speak 6 languages, am I a genius?

English
Mandarin
Vietnamese
Hokkien
Foul Language KNNBCCB
Body Language

 

[Narong Wongwan]

yes csm speaks English with a chink accent and Chinese like he is a true blue China man while lhl speaks local English and speaks Chinese like an ang moh.

If you read the article it did state that the level of intelligence scales up according to level of proficiency of bilingualism

i know of many brilliant A levels students who aced every subject but just could not get that D7 grade (technical fail) in chinese so had to study overseas....while on the other hand there were those that scored As for the languages but only average in other subjects.

 

[Narong Wongwan]

you cannot beat this guy...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sd1nNTyNAhw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Then I must be very smart too...

English
Mandarin
Malay
Hokkien
Teochew
Thai
Cantonese

 

[Rogue Trader]

bless our great Leeder for bestowing us with intelligence..!

 

[Baimi]

I speak more than 20 languages
most of them few words, :P

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

How about bilingual in languages that have different writing scripts.
Face it speaking and writing chinese and english is much much harder than being able to speak and write in spanish, portugese or french and english.

 

[Bigfuck]

bless our great Leeder for bestowing us with intelligence..!

I do not know what he is talking about. Maths is a language regardless spoken language. Many a discussion between Chinese and Americans or other races was on a board in maths symbol. Music is a language. Sports is a language and so is architecture. Also, dialects have far more expressive power than has been given credit. Art is also a language.

 

[Kinana]

Most sinkies are good neither in English nor Chinese. everything half half.

 

[looneytan]

That makes sense on my observation of I,sinkie am stupid...

self praise again, fuckard

 

[god_zeus]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?src=me&ref=general

We are smarter then the average Ang Moh

it is not how many languages you speak that will make eyou smart
or how much books or how high u study

but the awareness that you are being 'conditioned' from young by and invisible external source
that influence your beliefs - the PAPLE THAT CONTROL YOUR THINKING
once u are 'aware' that u are standing in a box

u can then chose to step out
and see the world from a different perspective

if you still beleive in the PAP
that is a sure sign that you are operating perfectly from your 'conditioned' sate of mind
and are unaware
AND ARE NO SMARTER than a dog who is being 'conditioned' to fetch athe newspaper when the master rings the bell

 

[kulgai]

We are smarter then the average Ang Moh

Do u seriously think ur smarter cos ur bilingual? Think again..