Cognitive Benefits of Language Immersion

Valerie Flores, a doctoral candidate at Loyola University Chicago, studies the cognitive ramifications of bilingualism, specifically in language brokers. A language broker is an individual, often a child, that uses his or her bilingual language skills to frequently translate materials for family and friends. The cognitive benefits of bilingualism have been widely studied and include superior performance on non-verbal spatial tasks and particular language tasks, protection against mental deterioration associated with aging, and strong ability to inhibit distractions. The stronger executive functions of bilingualism might stem from practice with attentional control--bilinguals must constantly switch between language and culture, inhibiting one while selecting the other. Ms. Flores knows that language brokers report higher test scores and academic self-efficacy, so she designed experiments to determine if brokerism provides a boost to executive functions beyond even that of bilingualism.

Ms. Flores reports that she found no advantages in brokers' working memory, but she did find evidence of increased inhibition. The team utilized the Color-Word Stroop Test, which consists of flashcards with names of colors in various shades of ink. The participant is instructed to report the color, which requires inhibition of the prepotent response to read the word. As was anticipated, brokers' scores on the test were high, indicating strong cognitive inhibition. The participants were then asked to identify the color of words that appeared in boxes, but read the words that weren't boxed. Brokers generally performed better on this shift-test, which might be explained by the cognitive flexibility that must accompany switching between languages.

In his article on language immersion programs, Dr. Grosjean reports that the cognitive benefits of bilingualism aren't restricted to early learners--later exposure to another language also improves executive functioning. Dr. Grosjean cites studies comparing syntactic awareness and verbal fluency, which found that immersion children have metalinguistic advantages over their monolingual counterparts. Studies have shown that while immersion does produce results similar to those of early bilingualism, immersion students do not show the same prowess at inhibition as language brokers do. Dr. Grosjean attributes this to the fact that immersion students do not gain much experience in their second language outside of the classroom. Still, immersion in a second language seems like a wise investment, especially because the "length of time spent in a program...determines the extent to which executive control is affected."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/em/137648