Are Bilinguals Smarter?

Are you encouraging your kids to learn another language? It kind of reminds me of the perennial question, Why Do I need algebra?

Quote: NYTIMES: Why Bilinguals Are Smarter By YUDHIJIT BHATTACHARJEE

SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

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The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function — a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks.

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The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.”
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Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.
NY Times article

Quote: pacomartin's TITLE OF THREAD

Are Bilinguals Are Smarter

They may not be smarter, but hopefully they know how to conjugate the verb "to be" ;)

Bilinguals arrrrrr smarrtterrrr especially if the speak Pirate, Arrrrrr!!

My English teacher used to tell a joke about the Mexican tourist who marvelled that all the chidlren in China were geniuses, seeing how they could all speak fluent Chinese :)

Are these "smart bilinguals" cognitively different than those who become fluent in a second language later in life (say, starting to learn a second language in college at age 18 years old)?

And the really important question... What language do they use when they dream?

I had a college friend who got drafted in 1971,
the summer we graduated. He went in the Army
as an officer because he had a degree. They
tested him and found he had an aptitude for
language. He went to linguistics school and in 3
months had learned to speak Korean so well
they sent him to S Korea as an interpreter.

He was very smart and when he got out, got a
job at a corporation where he stayed till he retired,
making a high 6 figure salary. He forgot all
the Korean he learned, however. You lose it if you
don't use it.

I think you are "smart" based on the smarts you were genetically given at birth. You can't "get smarter."

However, you can learn more and be more rounded. Multiple languages will give you this feature. The parts about being more situationally aware and such I just see more among smart people in general. Smart people are always thinking. We have talked here in the past about the things some of us think about on road trips alone. The smart person is always thinking.

That being said, I wish I could force myself to learn Japanese so I can travel there one day.

Quote: AZDuffman

I think you are "smart" based on the smarts you were genetically given at birth. You can't "get smarter."

While I agree one is genetically predisposed to be intelligent, I think it is possible to "get smarter" in a sense. The brain is an amazing thing that can constantly rearrange neurons and make new synaptic connections or destroy others. This is how we can continue to learn things later in life. Maybe we aren't really more intelligent, but we can tap into that intelligence more.

Quote: AZDuffman

I think you are "smart" based on the smarts you were genetically given at birth. You can't "get smarter."

Well the claim of the article is that it makes you "smarter" since none of us are born bilingual.

It reminds me of code switching which is considered a highly intelligent behavior. It's poor cousin is inserting a word from you native language because you can't think of the correct word in your second language. b]Code switching is the rapid insertion of the perfect word into the conversation, where the person knows both languages so well, they can draw from either language. They are often unaware that they switched languages.

Code-switching is sometimes called Spanglish, but scholars consider it something different. Spanglish is the insertion of English or Spanish words into the language, particularly near the border or in Hawaii or Louisiana (in the USA). Code-switching is the insertion of entire sentences. Spanglish is not a technical word, so it is difficult to define.

Scholarly presentation - mostly Spanish
Funny Code Switching skit - mostly English (slightly blue)

Sometimes code-switching refers to the ability to transform your entire style of speech depending on your audience.