Benefits Of Bilingualism

Emma Schlager
12-14-15

I have always been interested in learning about languages and have been taking classes since I was young. Even though I am currently far from bilingual, I love to learn about other languages, and I also desire to become fluent in a language other than English. I am fascinated with various languages and how being bilingual can influence multiple other aspects of a person’s life. While searching for an article, I was trying to find a study that showed some on the effects that bilingualism can have on a child’s development. This article intrigued me because it focused on the development of the working memory for both bilingual and monolingual children. The studies tested the children’s executive functioning skills instead
Bilingual children were shown to have advantage in the more difficult conditions that related to executive function components. Therefore the fact that bilinguals perform better on working memory tasks can be contributed to the task’s demands for executive function. This task provided a connection to bilingualism on a child's working memory by minimizing the possibility of linguistic difficulties to alter the results in favor of monolingual children. These studies used tasks that consisted of visual and visual spatial requirements thus minimizing verbal requirements. According to the author, the findings of the tests suggest that bilingual advantages may be the result of other executive functioning components in addition to working memory are impacted by bilingualism. Instead it is possible that bilingualism impacts many different abilities that ultimately heighten cognitively demanding tasks. Working memory is important for cognitive development, and it is definitely advanced in bilingual children. Bilingual children constantly use both languages and the experience of both languages leads to their enhanced working memory. Unlike other tasks that have been shown to increase a child’s working memory, bilingualism is unique in that it is the result of the child’s family, and not their ability for learning
All of the children were middle-class, from the same area and attended the same school. Bilingualism may have a different effect on the upper class, lower class, third world countries and even people from different cultures. A different upbringing in a different area may also impact a child’s working memory. Also the age of the children was somewhat limited and it didn’t show how bilingualism affects the child’s working memory over time. The tests also showed that more than just working memory are impacted by bilingualism and therefore it is hard to determine the extent to which bilingualism had on working memory