Being bilingual may be handy in the nation’s capital, but research from the Université de Montréal shows knowing more than one language is also good for your brain as you grow older.
Researchers at the university found that being bilingual makes carrying out tasks and concentrating easier as we age.
Professor Ana Inés Ansaldo conducted a study in which two groups of seniors—one monolingual and one bilingual—were asked to perform various tasks while ignoring outside distraction, according to a press release from the Université de Montréal. The point of the study was to “discover the benefits of bilingualism,” Ansaldo said in the release.
In the study, both bilingual and monolingual participants were asked to focus on the colour of an object, while ignoring how the object was placed. Then, the researchers observed the number of regions of the brain in use in both sets of participants.
The bilingual seniors who participated in the study used less brain function to achieve the same results as the monolingual participants, according to the research.
In an interview, Ansaldo said being fluent in more than one language gives you a cognitive advantage because your brain becomes more efficient at deciding what is relevant information.
Both groups of participants did equally well in performing the task, she added. The only difference was in the areas of the brain used to complete the task.
The study was done using mature adults because in young adults, cognition is at its peak, and attention and memory skills are optimized, Ansaldo said. In a study done on young adults, the advantages of bilingualism would not have shown clearly.
“The tasks [used in the study] were not difficult enough to show the advantages of being bilingual,” she said.
Ansaldo said she speaks more than two languages, including Spanish and German, but added speaking more than two languages wouldn’t further improve brain function.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of how many languages you speak,” Ansaldo said.
Marine Gouts, a member of the Francophone Club at Carleton University, said speaking two languages helps her discover new cultures, and makes her more open-minded. Gout was born in France, and lived in England before coming to Ottawa.
“What I like most about being bilingual is that I can talk to people in their native language, because there are some parts of a speech that you cannot transcribe literally,” she said.
