Bilingualism broadens brainpower
Second-year neuroscience student Yuta Ebikawa speaks both English and Japanese. A recent study found bilingual people are better able to multitask and are less likely to show early signs of Alzheimer’s.
By Nicole Arulanantham
March 4, 2011 6:32 a.m.
Neurobiologists from across the country have discovered that students who are fluent in at least two languages are better at multitasking and less likely to face an early onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
The findings were presented at a conference in Washington, D.C., last month.
“A lot of brain imaging scans have shown that being bilingual has changed the structure of the brain,” said Lauren Mason Carris, a doctoral candidate in applied linguistics at UCLA. “Intellect is measured by the density of gray matter in the brain, and people who are bilingual have been shown to have more gray matter than monolinguals.”
Brain activity contributes to the formation of gray matter. On another level, bilinguals and multilinguals are exposed to a broader range of social and cultural experiences, Mason Carris said.
This in turn keeps a larger part of the brain active, thus decreasing the chances of facing an early onset of Alzheimer’s disease, she said.
Second-year neuroscience student Yuta Ebikawa entered preschool without knowing a word of English. The native Japanese speaker struggled to memorize a whole new alphabet and unfamiliar grammar rules, but this difficulty proved to be useful when he took Spanish classes in high school.
“I think I had a fairly easier time learning Spanish than most people,” Ebikawa said. “The pronunciation of Spanish words is really similar to some Japanese words, so I had a much easier time speaking Spanish.”
For first-year biology student Kathie Huang, being already fluent in English and Cantonese also made learning a third language, Mandarin, much easier in high school. She said she does not speak Cantonese with people at UCLA, so her parents have been a primary factor in the maintenance of the language.
“Speaking another language makes me think of new ways to explain myself,” Huang said. “I don’t know a lot of vocab(ulary) in Chinese, so I have to figure out how to say things to my parents because they don’t speak English.”
While the neurobiological implications of bilinguilism research is great, the significance from a social standpoint is also vast and has been known for many years, Mason Carris said.
“Being able to think critically in cognitively demanding ways is the benefit of bilingualism and multilingualism,” she said. “We have all of this really important research that shows the importance of bilingualism, but that does not change what we have in our school systems.”
Mason Carris said the full health and social benefits of bilingualism can only be attained if one maintains fluency in the language. Additionally, it is important for a speaker to have experience in a variety of discourse settings including casual conversation as well as more formal situations.
This kind of fluency could help students recognize root words from other languages that will show up throughout their academic careers, she said.
But school systems have yet to implement successful language education programs, Mason Carris said. Though Ebikawa was fully immersed in an English-only environment, the typical foreign language class does not provide this type of setting.
“To implement change, there’s a big sociopolitical movement that needs to happen,” Mason Carris said. “The research alone doesn’t guarantee that things are going to change.”
