14 DAY TRIAL // The latest scientific investigations on the benefits of multilingualism indicate that being able to speak multiple languages does more for us than simply to enable communications with a larger number of people. Multilingualism also contributes to keeping the brain fit, and making us smarter.
According to scientists, learning one or more foreign languages has a deeply-positive impact on the brain, which leads to a drastic improvement in our cognitive skills. This effect was recently proven to protect against the development of various forms of dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
These conclusions are not in tune with our past views on learning multiple languages. Throughout most of the 20th Century, politicians, parents and educators thought that asking children to learn a foreign language interfered with their academic and intellectual development.
It was also widely believed that this would interfere with the young one's cognitive abilities. This interference does exist, scientists say, but it is actually not a problem, but an advantage. What it does is force the brain to resolve inner conflicts in a manner that strengthens its cognitive “muscles.”
The human brain has two simultaneously active language systems, and only one is used when the person's native language is spoken. The conflict that occurs between the two is what drove many researchers to believe that learning a new language would impair the brain.
This has been demonstrated in a series of studies, which showed how bilinguals were able to solve certain types of mental puzzles faster and better than monolinguals. In the former group, the brain's executive functions were considerably strengthened and improved.
These functions are a control system of sorts, which the brain uses to stay focused, ignore distractions, switch attention between tasks, remembering things in the short term, and so on.
Recent studies have also demonstrated that bilinguals may simply be more efficient at recognizing changes that occur in their environments. Scientists liken this ability to what drivers need to do to monitor their surroundings while behind the wheel.
Speaking multiple languages is also an exercise that strengthens neural connections, making it more difficult for dementia, or even mild cognitive impairment (MCI), to set in. Exercising your memory, or solving math problems, were proven to have similar, compounding effects, The New York Times reports.