Bilingualism and enhanced cognitive abilites

Are you a bilingual person? Were you born into a family where your mother spoke one language and your father – another? According to numerous studies, you may have enhanced cognitive abilities, problem-solving skills, and multi-tasking capabilities. Bear in mind that we are talking about natural bilinguals, i.e. people who picked up both languages in their childhood.

Children remember pretty much anything they hear; their young brains memorize and exploit any information that they received, and languages are by far the best example for that. If a child speaks one language at home, with the mother, and another in kindergarten, for example, which also happens to be the language of the father, then we have a classic example of a child who will become a natural bilingual.

Many parents who speak different languages from their partners fear that children might be confused, stressed and not be able to learn either of the languages to fluency.

That is a deeply wrong assumption. Now, it has indeed been proven that bilingual children have SOME delay in achieving fluency in their main language, but that quickly fades away in their teen years.

Children are perfectly capable of mastering two, three and even four languages during their early years. Moreover, their constant need to switch between languages leads to enhanced usage of the prefrontal cortex of the brain which is responsible for problem-solving and multi-tasking.

The relation between the enhanced cognitive skills and bilingualism has been proven through various tests and tasks taken by bilingual and monolingual children, and the results were predominantly in favor of the bilinguals. I recommend reading more on the topic, especially the works of Ms. Ellen Bialystock

So, if you are bilingual, take some pride in it! Chances are – you have a natural superpower!