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Bilingual people's brains are physically different from monolingual people's brains. There are certain areas related to language that have more "healthy" characteristics.
These physical changes are a consequence of the repetitive use of the tools that our brain constantly uses to interpret the world around us, called "Cognitive Processes". By constantly speaking and thinking in two different languages, we would be executing these processes more frequently, which generates these changes or "physical marks".
Main Cognitive Processes
- PERCEPTION
- MEMORY
- ATTENTION
- EMOTION
Laboratory tests have shown some outstanding "Functional" characteristics of bilingual brains and it has been possible to establish 3 cognitive domains where they tend to perform better:
1 ) HIGHER OPERATING MEMORY CAPACITY (Working Memory)
This is the capacity of the human being that allows him to keep a series of elements in memory and work with them in a short period of time.
Bilingual people, since they face more complex contextual-conversational situations than monolingual people, tend to further develop this working memory or working memory, which allows them to keep more elements in working memory and also the work they can do with these elements are significantly better than that performed by monolingual people.
For example, in laboratory tests, participants had a similar ability to memorize a random sequence of numbers:
But when they were asked to say these same numbers in reverse, which is more complex:
it was the bilinguals who performed better, offering better results.
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2 ) GREATER ABILITY TO TAKE THE OTHER'S PERSPECTIVE
Reference is not being made to "Empathy" but to a more situational context, which allows us to see reality from another point of view or with another perspective.
Bilingual people become social beings with special agility that allows them to decide more quickly and choose the vocabulary resources necessary to be able to communicate according to the language needs of their interlocutor, thus developing a better performance of the "Perspective Taking" processes. , which allows them to evaluate situations from the point of view of people.
3 ) GREATER COGNITIVE RESERVE
These functional differences, which we named above, do not necessarily translate into advantages for life in general or for work, but when we talk about cognitive reserves, we could establish a relationship between processes and daily life, since the "brain aging "is considerably reduced in bilingual people, because the physical deterioration that occurs when we get older can be better compensated for.
Scientists have been able to determine that bilingual people cope better with degenerative neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's.
In the case of dementia, for example, the results showed a mean difference of 4.5 years in the appearance of the first symptoms.
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BENEFITS OF BILINGUALISM IN THE SENIOR AGE
People do not necessarily have to be born and raised in a bilingual environment to benefit from a "protective effect" on their brain. Also the fact of learning a second language in adulthood, and even in the "third age" (when the brain is completely monolingual) represents an enormous mental effort that would help increase the levels of cognitive reserve and improve synaptic processes.
CONCLUSION
Learning and mastering a second language will always be beneficial for us.
Increasing our communicational power allows us to establish contact with people from other cultures, it allows us to universalize ourselves, since, by mastering English (for example) we could establish contact and exchange ideas with people from anywhere in the world.
In addition to these advantages, we have learned that mastering a second language will also help us improve the health conditions of our brain, thus reducing the possibility of neurodegenerative diseases.
@juanmolina
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This is very informative. In my country though it is hard to find someone who speaks a single language. Usually apart from the local dialect a person will speak English. For example my local dialect is Runyankole and it's the language spoken at home. I learned English at school. Also due to travelling I speak 3 other local dialects.This is actually very common in Uganda. There over 143 languages in the country and usually everyone speaks more than one language.