Unexpected Cognitive Benefits of growing up in a bilingual home.

Recent research shows for the first time that adults who acquired their second
language as young children are faster at switching attention and detecting visual
changes. This is in comparison with adults who learned their second language later in
life.

New research has found that growing up in a bilingual home may provide cognitive
unexpected benefits later in life, according to the authors, in the journal «Scientific
Reports».

The study shows, for the first time, that adults who acquired their second language as
young children, (early bilingual) are faster switching attention and detecting visual
changes; in comparison with adults who learned their second language later in life
(late bilingual).

Directed by Doctor Dena D’Souza, at Anglia University Ruskin (ARU), in the United
Kingdom, this research incorporated 127 adults in two separate experiments. The first
involved viewing images on one screen, one image changes gradually and the other
remains equally. The early bilinguals noticed these changes much faster than the late
bilinguals.

The second experiment discovered that first bilinguals had better control over their
attention. In detail, they were faster to divert attention from one image to switch their
focus to another.

The team had previously discovered that young children raised in bilingual homes get
used to their more varied and unpredictable linguistic environment by switching their
visual attention with promptness and recurrence. The findings of this new study
suggest that these adaptations acquired as bilingual babies continued till adulthood.

D'Souza senior lecturer in Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) said “This study
is an interesting extension of that previous research, which suggested that young
children raised in bilingual homes adapt to their more complex linguistic environment
by switching attention faster and recurrence.”

“This adaptation may help them to take advantage of numerous sources of visual
information, such as mouth movements, facial expressions, and subtle gestures, which
in the last instance will help them to learn various languages. The findings of this new
research with bilingual adults suggest that some of these adaptations, including
promptness to switch attention, are maintained till adulthood.”