Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2012.03.001

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Volume 16, Issue 4, April 2012, Pages 240-250

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2012.03.001 Get rights and content

Building on earlier evidence showing a beneficial effect of bilingualism on children's cognitive development, we review recent studies using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods to examine the effects of bilingualism on cognition in adulthood and explore possible mechanisms for these effects. This research shows that bilingualism has a somewhat muted effect in adulthood but a larger role in older age, protecting against cognitive decline, a concept known as ‘cognitive reserve’. We discuss recent evidence that bilingualism is associated with a delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia. Cognitive reserve is a crucial research area in the context of an aging population; the possibility that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve is therefore of growing importance as populations become increasingly diverse.

Section snippets

Why bilingualism?

It is generally believed that more than half of the world's population is bilingual [1]. In each of the U.S.A.¹ and Canada²

What is different about bilingual minds?

It has long been assumed that childhood bilingualism affected developing minds, but the belief was that the consequences for children were negative: learning two languages would be confusing [8]. A study by Peal and Lambert [9] cast doubt on this belief by reporting that children in Montreal who were either French-speaking monolinguals or English–French bilinguals performed differently on a battery of tests. The authors had expected to find lower scores in the bilingual group on language tasks

Joint activation of languages

A logical possibility for the organization of a bilingual mind is that it consists of two independently-represented language systems that are uniquely accessed in response to the context: a fluent French–English bilingual ordering coffee in a Parisian café has no reason to consider how to form the request in English, and a Cantonese–English bilingual studying psychology in Boston does not need to recast the material through Chinese. Yet, substantial evidence shows that this is not how the

Bilingual performance on conflict tasks

Early evidence that bilingual children solved non-verbal conflict tasks differently from monolingual children was reported in a study by Bialystok and Majumder [17]. Eight-year-old children were given a variety of non-verbal problems to solve, some of which contained perceptual distraction (block design from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, WISC [67]) and some which did not (Noelting's Juice Task 68, 69). Bilingual children outperformed monolinguals on the conflict tasks, but

The nature of the bilingual advantage

Why might bilingualism be associated with an advantage in attentional control? The need to manage two jointly activated languages apparently leads to an enhancement of frontal-posterior attentional control mechanisms with the consequence that other types of cognitive control are also enhanced. Inhibitory control was suggested as the relevant mechanism in early studies 40, 57 and continues to be endorsed by some researchers 47, 111. One problem with this account, however, is the recurrent

Bilingualism and dementia

The finding that bilingualism enhances cognitive control raises the possibility that lifelong bilingualism protects against age-related cognitive decline, and may even postpone the onset of symptoms of dementia. In this case, bilingualism may be one of the environmental factors that contribute to cognitive reserve or brain reserve [116]. Cognitive reserve is the idea that engagement in stimulating physical or mental activity can act to maintain cognitive functioning in healthy aging and

Concluding remarks

In the first study reporting the surprising outcome of an advantage in cognitive and linguistic performance by bilingual children, Peal and Lambert concluded: ‘Intellectually [the bilingual child's] experience with two language systems seems to have left him with a mental flexibility, a superiority in concept formation, a more diversified set of mental abilities’ ([9], p. 20). Peal and Lambert did not explain what they meant by ‘mental flexibility’ but the description works well to describe the

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by grant R01HD052523 from the US National Institutes of Health and grant A2559 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to E.B.; grant A8261 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to F.I.M.C.; and grant MOP57842 from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to E.B. and F.I.M.C. We thank Steven Lovasz for his assistance in preparing the manuscript.

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Several studies have analyzed the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation on verbal fluency tasks in non-clinical populations. Nevertheless, the reported effects on verbal fluency are inconsistent. In addition, the effect of other techniques such as transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS) on verbal fluency enhancement has yet to be studied in healthy multilingual populations. This study aims to explore the effects of tRNS on verbal fluency in healthy multilingual individuals. Fifty healthy multilingual (Spanish, English and Basque) adults were randomly assigned to a tRNS or sham group. Electrodes were placed on the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left inferior frontal gyrus. All participants performed phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks before, during (online assessment) and immediately after (offline assessment) stimulation in three different languages. The results showed significantly better performance by participants who received tRNS in the phonemic verbal fluency tasks in Spanish (in the online and offline assessment) and English (in the offline assessment). No differences between conditions were found in Basque nor semantic verbal fluency. These findings suggests that tRNS on the left prefrontal cortex could help improve phonemic, yet not semantic, fluency in healthy multilingual adults.
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Using an asset-based framework, this study examines the holistic developmental health outcomes of young English Learners (ELs) in the United States using the Early Development Instrument (EDI), stratified by first language and neighborhood risk measured by the National Neighborhood Equity Index (NNEI). Drawing from data spanning 154 school districts across 11 states and the District of Columbia from 2016 to 2020 (n = 192,892 kindergartners), the analyses encompassed descriptive statistics, Pearson Chi-square tests, and logistic regression models. The results highlight that EL kindergartners were more likely to be On Track in the social competence (OR = 1.17; 95 % CI = 1.13, 1.20), emotional maturity (OR = 1.26; 95 % CI = 1.22, 1.30), and physical health and well-being (OR = 1.47; 95 % CI = 1.43,1.51) domains compared to non-EL kindergartners. Yet, in the communication skills and general knowledge (OR = 0.75; CI = 0.72, 0.77) and language and cognitive development (OR = 0.72; CI = 0.70, 0.74) domains, EL kindergartners were less likely to be On Track compared to non-EL kindergartners. Notably, Korean- and Mandarin-speaking kindergartners showed the highest rates of being On Track across all EDI domains. Additionally, EL kindergartners in less challenged neighborhoods were surprisingly less likely to be On Track compared to those in more adverse neighborhoods across all developmental domains. Implications of these findings, which shed light on distinctive strengths and needs, are discussed.
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Previous research suggests that creativity may be facilitated by a positive mood and inhibited by a negative mood. Likewise, speaking a second language (L2) has been shown to benefit creative performance. However, little is known about a possible interactive effect of mood and bilingualism on creative thinking. This question becomes more interesting in light of accumulating evidence that bilinguals experience emotional distancing in their second (L2) language compared to their first (L1) language, especially when exposed to negative emotional content. This raises the question of whether bilinguals experience reduced interference from a negative mood when generating ideas in L2 relative to L1, potentially creating conditions conducive to creative thinking. To address this question, Polish–English bilinguals were induced with a positive or negative mood through exposure to classical music excerpts and were asked to generate alternative uses for 12 everyday objects in L1 and L2. Our results show increased idea creativity in L2 compared to L1 when bilinguals were in a negative mood. This result was accompanied by decreased arousal ratings in a negative compared to positive mood in L2 but not in L1. In contrast with idea creativity, participants generated more ideas in L1 than in L2 and in a positive mood than in a negative mood. Together, we provide novel evidence for reduced effects of a negative mood on creative performance in L2 compared to L1, likely enhancing the creative potential of bilinguals when operating in L2.
Modeling the bilingual advantage: Do results differ between analysis methods?
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Whether bilingualism results in improved executive function is controversial. According to some researchers, putative bilingual advantages can be explained by individual differences in unmeasured non-linguistic variables. Additionally, commonly used models containing exclusively fixed-effects do not account for the data structure inherent in multi-trial behavioral tasks. Mixed-effects models by contrast address both of these issues, allowing for a more valid test of the bilingual advantage hypothesis. The present study aimed to assess whether the choice of analysis method impacted on results when investigating the bilingual advantage in executive function. Simon task data from Mandarin-English speaking Chinese adolescents were analyzed using separate fixed and mixed-effects models. Comparisons between models revealed considerable differences in the pattern of results. Most notable was the observation that a number of previously significant main effects on task performance were no longer significant in a mixed model accounting for the inclusion of multiple trials for each participant. Implications for the bilingual advantage are discussed.
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Trends in Cognitive Sciences

ReviewFeature ReviewBilingualism: consequences for mind and brain

Section snippets

Why bilingualism?

What is different about bilingual minds?

Joint activation of languages

Bilingual performance on conflict tasks

The nature of the bilingual advantage

Bilingualism and dementia

Concluding remarks

Acknowledgments

Cognition

J. Neurolinguist.

J. Mem. Lang.

Brain Lang.

J. Mem. Lang.

Acta Psychol.

Cognition

Arch. Clin. Neuropsychol.

Cogn. Psychol.

Learn. Individ. Differ.

J. Mem. Lang.

J. Mem. Lang.

J. Mem. Lang.

J. Mem. Lang.

Acta Psychol.

NeuroImage

Brain Lang.

Cognition

NeuroImage

Cognition

Cognition

Cognition

Brain Lang.

NeuroImage

NeuroImage

Brain Lang.

NeuroImage

NeuroImage

Brain Cogn.

Bilingual: Life and Reality

Neuroplasticity: changes in grey matter induced by training

Nature

Exercising your brain: a review of human brain plasticity and training induced learning

Psychol. Aging

Effects of age and naturally occurring experience on spatial visualization performance

Dev. Psychol.

Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Increased cortical representation of fingers of the left hand in string players

Science

Music lessons enhance IQ

Psychol. Sci.

Mirror of Language: The Debate on Bilingualism

The relation of bilingualism to intelligence

Psychol. Monogr.

The influence of bilingualism on cognitive strategy and cognitive development

Child Dev.

Factors in the growth of linguistic awareness

Child Dev.

Levels of bilingualism and levels of linguistic awareness

Dev. Psychol.

Childhood bilingualism and metalinguistic skills: analysis and control in young Swedish–English bilinguals

Appl. Psycholinguist.

Subject-specific and task-specific characteristics of metalinguistic awareness in bilingual children

Appl. Psycholinguist.

Bilingualism and cognitive development

Child Dev.

The relationship between bilingualism and the development of cognitive processes in problem-solving

Appl. Psycholinguist.

Alerting, orienting, and executive attention: developmental properties and sociodemographic correlates in an epidemiological sample of young, urban children

Child Dev.

Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children

Biling. Lang. Cogn.

Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual adults

Biling. Lang. Cogn.

Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification

Mem. Cognit.

The bilingual effect on Boston Naming Test performance

J. Int. Neuropsychol. Soc.

Review
Feature Review
Bilingualism: consequences for mind and brain