Contrary to the popular belief, language learning is way beyond simply broadening communication skills or exploring new job opportunities. As per Hind Louali French School of Austin-Ecole Jean-Jacques Rousseau, learning a second language can actually have a pretty powerful impact one the brain of a person, and promote cognitive enhancement in several ways. In addition to fostering new relationships and promoting cultural awareness, bilingualism can help boost mental fitness.
Hind Louali discusses a few cognitive benefits of bilingualism
Language and cognition are closely intertwined. Cognition implies to the mental processes used for comprehension and gaining knowledge. Cognitive processes can include knowing, thinking, remembering, judging, and problem-solving. Language essentially is a tool used by people to think, learn and communicate their ideas and thoughts to others. It helps in shaping the manner in which people perceive the world. Hence, as a person expands their vocabulary, no matter whether in their native tongue or in a new language, it can help speed up cognitive processes by enabling the individual to grasp and express new ideas in a more precise manner. When people develop a better sense of the nuances of a language, they are also able to effectively improve their ability to remember and describe experiences and concepts.
As per certain research, when a bilingual person uses one language, the other language they know is active at the same time. This is called language co-activation. The constant juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much the person can access a certain language at any given time. This would be an important skill to learn from the standpoint of communication, as it is not easy to understand a message if it is constantly interfered by a second language. Bilingual speakers make use of their control mechanisms every time they speak or listen. This constant practice helps in strengthening the control mechanisms, as well as changes the associated brain regions.
Hind Louali French School of Austin-Ecole Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions that the bilingual advantages in the executive function of the brain is not limited to its language network. Bilingual individuals often show increased activation in the region of the brain that is linked with cognitive skills like inhibition and attention. Bilingual individuals, are for instance, often better at encoding the fundamental frequency of sounds in the presence of background noise, in comparison to their monolingual counterparts. Therefore, in a noisy restaurant or stadium, it is likely to be easier for a bilingual person than for a monolingual person to encode what the other person is saying. Bilingual experience seems to not only modify how neurological structures process information but might also change the structures themselves. Greater proficiency in a second language and earlier acquisition are linked to increased gray matter volume in the left inferior parietal cortex, which is the brain region responsible for managing language switching. Broadly speaking, being bilingual can have tangible practical benefits. The improvements in cognitive and sensory processing tends to be driven by bilingual experience that helps people to better process information.
