Cognition

Individuals who speak more than one language have some advantages in certain cognitive tasks over monolingual individuals:

• Bilingual individuals develop different neurological pathways which influence the way in which information is processed. The age at which the additional language is learned influences the type of neurological pathways created and the way the speaker accesses the language.
• Bilingual individuals can control which language to use, and this boosts the development of certain executive control processes in bilinguals, including enhanced attentional control and working memory.
• Bilingual young people are able to process verbal information better than monolingual children.
• The conditions under which bilingual individuals display an advantage in executive control function may be task and age dependent. Further work needs to be done to explore this.

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