Bilingualism slows cognitive aging

[PfcHammer]

http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=st/sn/06140002aaa00afc.upi&Sys=siteia&Fid=LATEBRKN&Type=News&Filter=Late%20Breaking

Bilingualism slows cognitive aging

TORONTO, Ontario, June 14 (UPI) -- Speaking two languages fluently may prevent some of the cognitive decline seen with age, Canadian researchers said.

Scientists long have known learned knowledge and habitual procedures -- called crystallized knowledge -- hold up well with age, but abilities that depend on keeping attention on a task -- known as fluid intelligence -- usually decline as people age.

Researchers at York University found people who spoke two languages every day since they were 10 years old were better able to manage a complex set of rapidly changing tasks in an experimental test called The Simon Task. The subjects also were less distracted, a factor usually more greatly affected by age.

The study included about 150 monolingual and bilingual middle-aged and older adults and measured the decline of reaction time and cognitive processing with age. The researchers showed subjects flashing squares on a computer screen and asked them to press a particular color key when they saw a square in a certain location on the screen.

[AspenRose]

1. If there's any truth to the old joke about americans being monolingual

then americans (in general) are in trouble!

Present company excluded, of course! We have lots of multilinguists here at DU.

[LittleApple81]

2. That refers to the old joke: what do you call somebody who

speaks several languages? Polyglot. What do you call somebody who speaks two languages? bilingual. What do you call somebody who speaks one language? American.

Seriously, I am bilingual but I feel that I am as forgetful as any of my "one-language" friends.

My daughter is fluent in 5 languages (English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian). So her brain is going to be running smoothly for a long time!

My son is fluent in 3 languages: English, Spanish, and German. We tried to have him learn French by hiring a tutor who came to our home twice a week. He decided he did not want to learn French. "He said: I don't find any use for another language. Besides, I already know three and most of my classmates know only half!" (due to the teaching at American schools I would have to agree with him). I am pretty sure he will grow to regret it, but you cannot force a kid to do anything he does not want to do....

[eyesroll]

3. What does instruction in several languages, but mastery of none (except

English), do?

I've studied Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Esperanto, but haven't really gone above a basic "ask where the bathroom is" conversation in any (well, Spanish for awhile, but most of that's gone). I enjoy linguistics, though -- language families, roots, that sort of thing.

[Spinzonner]

4. Well, that explains Shrubs problem

His brain is prematurely aging due to the fact that he's Zero-lingual

[union_maid]

5. My husband's grandmother became..I don't know what you'd call it..

German was her native language. She got here in her thirties and learned enough English to get along fine. Her English was always broken and heavily accented, though. She lived to be quite old and long outlived anyone that she spoke German with so in the last decades of her life she spoke heavily accented, broken English, but could no longer speak German. I don't know what that has to do with anything, but I always thought it was interesting.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. That's not uncommon among adult immigrants who

never return to their native country. My great-grandparents were like that, speaking half German, half English, neither perfectly, since they came here in 1899 and never returned. (One died in 1963 and the other in 1971). I have also met Japanese women who came here shortly after WWII as the wives of American servicemen and who can barely speak Japanese anymore.

[Yupster]

6. Boy Bush must be a genius then

He speaks languages the rest of us haven't even heard of before.