Does being bilingual(多語言使用者) make you smarter?
By Miguel Angel Muñoz
Summary:
The article discusses about the costs and benefits of bilingualism, which means the one who is familiar with two or more languages, compared to monolingual, who uses only one language. We can check two linked parts to know our extent of bilingualism. One is language proficiency, and the other one is language use, which means that the more you use it, the more bilingual you will be.
The costs of bilingualism are that they tend to have weaker verbal skills. Instead, using two or more languages will affect the multifactorial executive control system, and functional and structural properties of various cortical and subcortical structures in the brain. However, it didn't means you are smarter if you are bilingual. It just helps maintain cognitive function, and delay the onset of symptons in people who suffer from dementia. In the end, in recent research, the bilingual benefit didn't always found in young bilingual adults.
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