‘Ciao bella!’ is one of the few phrases I remember from my
study abroad experience last semester. Touring different European countries
opens your eyes to the vast amount of cultures, languages and immense history
throughout the world. One of my most striking revelations was the ease with
which most Europeans spoke multiple languages. While walking through markets
the vendors would try to guess your nationality by yelling different greetings
in various languages. Being blonde with blue eyes I most often greeted with
English, however on the rare occasion they thought I was Russian or German I
would swell with pride because I was finally not sticking out as an obvious
tourist! This experience left me with the overwhelming desire to work on my
ability to speak Italian and the regret that I hadn’t begun learning a language
from a younger age. In the recent neuroscience lecture given by Valerie Flores,
a doctoral candidate at Loyola University Chicago, I realized that having the
ability to speak multiple languages has advantages beyond cultural emersion.
Ms. Flores’ research investigated the cognitive functions and abilities of people who were language “brokers”. She defined this as people whom continuously and effectively switch or translate between two languages. Language brokers are found to have better performance on tasks associated with metalinguistic awareness, or the ability to contemplate and manipulate the meaning and configuration of language. Furthermore, there was an increase in their executive functioning ability, which includes skills such as multi-tasking, sustained attention, and inhibitory control. Through tests such as the Color-Word Stroop Task, where participants were asked to identify the color of the word not the word presented and then measured response times, she was able to show that language brokers had a quicker response time and were able to shift attention to accurately respond to the questions asked.
In the New York Times article
titled “Why Bilinguals are Smarter”, author Yudhijit Bhattachargee discussed this
phenomenon further. The article began by explaining that the previously held
hypothesis that bilingualism “was an interference, cognitively speaking, that
hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development” was incorrect (Bhattachargee,
pg. 1). The article went on to highlight many of the same advantages of being
bilingual touched upon during Ms. Flores’ speech. One of the most intriguing
advantages is that, on average, bilingual people were more resistant to
symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and the degree to which a person is bilingual
was correlated to later onset of symptoms. Bilingual people not only showed an
increased ability to perform tasks associated with effective functioning but
they did this with lower activation in parts of the brain associated with these
tasks. So not only do they have higher ability but also a greater efficiency. The
article explained that bilinguals might have these higher cognitive abilities
because they have a “heighted ability to monitor the environment”
(Bhattachargee, pg. 1). Switching from language to language requires a person
to monitor slight changes in their environment and with practice would result
in an increased ability to focus and other executive function abilities.
Language is an invaluable
human ability as it is a means of communication that allows people to forge
friendships, fall in love, insight great change and revolutions. Bilingualism
allows people to do these things across cultures and bridge gaps to ease
understanding of others. I like to believe that I’m well aware of the powers of
language however; I had no idea that languages were as profoundly advantageous
as actually shaping and increasing brain functioning!
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