Latent Profile Analysis

In many studies, bilingual learners' brain can have better attentiveness and the ability to switch tasks than a mono-lingual learner’s brain because of their cognitive ability to control to suppress one language while using another language or switch from one language to another language simultaneously. Bilingualism also positively affects learners' academic progress (Saer, D. J. 1923).

While some may think that this is not certain studies have proven otherwise. In The Power of a Bilingual Brain, Jeffery Kluger states that, “Research is increasingly showing that the brains of people who know two or more languages….. Multilingual people, studies show, are better at reasoning, at multitasking, at grasping and reconciling conflicting ideas.”(1) Clearly, a bilingual education places students a step ahead not only in their education careers but, as well as in their daily life’s outside school. Jeffery Kluger discusses how a bilingual brain is not necessarily smarter brain, but is a more flexible and practical brain. Evidently, demonstrating to us one of the many benefits of a bilingual

Since its discovery in the 1950’s, ADHD has drastically affected the growth of psychology. The mystery surrounding ADHD, its symptoms, causes and its treatments, has sparked countless research studies and trials; psychologists and psychiatrists are intrigued to know more about the disorder. Research in ADHD has shown a remarkable amount of overlap between ADHD symptoms and those of co-morbid learning disorders and health conditions (Lange, Reichl, Lange, Tucha, & Tucha, 2010). A few examples of these comorbid conditions would be depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, dyslexia, and many others. The study of ADHD will continue to be an important aspect of psychology due to the ongoing advances in diagnoses

Valian believes that while bilingualism is only one of the factors that may boost cognitive functioning and that data from children and young adults are currently inconclusive, a bilingual advantage seems to be present among older people. Indeed, as Valian (2014a) suggests, studying younger individuals is difficult per se because they are exposed to so many other activities that may enhance executive function. There are currently very few studies on bilingualism in the aging

A recent study was held at the University of Granada and the University of York in Toronto, Canada. This study showed that the working memory, the system that retains, processes, and revises information over shorter periods of time, is better in bilingual children than monolingual students. From mental calculations to the comprehension of a reading, working memory plays a huge part in many activities we perform. The Journal of Experimental Child Psychology published this study. The goal of this study was to see how the development of the working memory is influenced by multilingualism. In addition, it explored the link between superior cognition and working memory for bilingual people.

As discussed previously, bilingual education promotes personal growth, develops social skills early on, and overall can lead to a variety of personality benefits. The first among these personality benefits includes the working memory of a student. When learning a second language, it has been proven through studies that the memory of young students will improve as they learn the language. Studies have also shown that it can increase their ability to process new sounds and students are much less likely to develop personal disorders when they learn a second language. The act of learning a second language not only prevents personal disorders but can boost a child’s self esteem and make them feel much less lonely than children that has only learned one language. Overall, having a student learn a second language does nothing but good for their overall anxiety, anger, and feelings in

Dr. Tom Schweizer, a neuroscientist in St. Michael Hospital in Canada studied the effects of bilingualism in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. He chose a sample of patients with similar background, education, and disease cognitive detriment. Half were monolingual and half were bilingual. Using CT scans and cognitive evaluation he found that even though bilingual patients showed twice as much atrophy, they performed as well in the cognitive test as their monolingual counterparts with less atrophy. This may be explained by the fact that bilingual individuals have developed enhanced neural networks or pathways, also called neural reserve, when switching from one language to another or suppressing one language from another. Dr. Schweizer explains that though bilingualism delays Alzheimer’s progression for about five years it does not prevent it.

Lifelong bilingualism has been associated with enhanced cognition. Scientists suggest that the bilingual experience is closely related to neurological variations observed in brain anatomy and function of bilinguals versus monolinguals. For instance, research conducted by Olsen et al. (2015) investigated the structural brain differences of lifelong bilingualism. Given the importance of the frontal and temporal lobes in executive and language functions, they hypothesized that bilinguals would exhibit greater volume of these cortical areas. The researchers discovered that bilinguals had more white matter in frontal lobe regions, which emphasizes the importance of preserved white matter in executive function. Following immersion in a second language, young adults also demonstrated increases in grey matter in the inferior frontal gyrus and anterior temporal lobe (Stein et al., 2012). Not only have scientists examined white and grey

On the other hand bilingual individuals should have enhanced processes such as increased cognitive flexibility, inhibition along with increased competence in updating information in the working memory (Miyake et al., 2000; Bialystok, 2009). Multiple researches and studies have indicated bilingual children gain the ability to attend to new features and switch criteria for sorting decisions while ignoring misleading distraction from meaning, earlier than their monolinguals (Ben-Zeev, 1977, Bialystok, 1999; Bialystok, 2010; Bialystok & Martin, 2004). Additionally, bilingual children have been shown to perform significantly better than monolingual children on metalinguistic tasks that require controlled attention and inhibition (Carlson & Meltzoff, 2008; Bialystok, 2009; Costa, Hernández, Costa-Faidella, & Sebastián-Gallés, 2009; Kovács & Mehler, 2009 and Bonifacci, Giombini, Bellocchi, and Contento, 2011). That said, Bialystok, Craik, and Ruocco (2006) and Bialystok (2006) found that these differences were not as statistically noteworthy in undergraduate university students. This seems to indicate that the functions under discussion may only be significantly different during childhood hence the bilingual child may learn these functions earlier than the monolingual child.

Bilingual children have been observed to surpass monolingual children in areas that require a large amount of concentration and cognitive control (Barac, Bialystok, Castro, & Sanchez, 2014; Kroll & Dussias, 2017). This can be based on the fact that the frontal cortex is constantly strengthening the neurological connections (Marian & Shook, 2012). In addition, structural changes within the brain such as grey and white matter increase within bilingual brains and even more so in multilingual brains (Li et al., 2014). Gray matter increases in volume and density the earlier the learner is introduced to a foreign language in which researchers have correlated this to the building of a larger vocabulary (Li et al.,

In an article called “Being Bilingual Makes You Smarter” it states that “the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function,a command system that directs the attention processes

What do we know about the effects bilingualism has on cognitive development? Our world is becoming progressively bilingual; in the US 21% of school age children between the ages of 5-17 years old can speak other than English at home and this number is expected to increase in the coming years. On top of social reasons, the positive effects to the cognitive development of the brain when introduced to a second language are of many. The age of acquisition is vital due to the plasticity of the brain, which according to the critical period hypothesis, begins to level after five years of age. In addition to plasticity, bilingual speakers are more capable of focusing their attention to solve complex problems compared to monolingual speakers.

Being bilingual can also allow one to multitask, and ultimately, drastically improve themselves in other subjects. As for the same reason being bilingual prevents Alzheimer's and dementia, it also allows bilinguals to better multitask. Judith Kroll, a distinguished professor of Psychology at Pennsylvania State University, spoke of the connection between multitasking and bilingualism while at the 2011 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington D.C: “recent research indicates that bilingual speakers can outperform monolinguals … [in areas] such as editing out irrelevant information and focusing on important information” (qtd. in Kroll). Being better at prioritizing tasks and working on multiple projects at one time is what

Cognitive benefits in executive control for bilinguals is highly researched; there is a plethora of experiments conducted showing bilinguals outscoring their monolingual counterparts for executive function. Fortunately, Gregory and Van Hell performed a Simon task Experiment with monolinguals, bilinguals, and trilinguals. Gregory and Van Hell are able to compare across all three groups and conclude, for the Simon effect, that monolinguals did the worst. Essentially, bilinguals did better than monolinguals, and trilinguals did better than bilinguals, although, only by a limited amount. Trilinguals did the best because they regularly practice their language control processes, especially compared to monolinguals, and

The structure of the brain serves as a visual aid in understanding the “architecture of language networks”, while the functions explain how these networks are aligned through different contexts or personal experiences (Wong, Ying & O’Brien, 2015). Several studies indicate that bilinguals have a select advantage over monolinguals in the capacity of their cognitive abilities, which results from their language experiences. Bilingual individuals constantly select and omit specific words when switching between their first and second languages. Therefore, this ability enables them to surpass monolinguals when performing tasks analogous to executive functioning (Wu & Thierry, 2013). Executive functions define functions that help individuals manage everyday tasks. While there are many different aspects of executive functioning, the main ones that are pertinent to language are inhibition, shift and update. Inhibition refers to the ability to stop an automatic, behavioral response when necessary, and shift refers to the ability to move freely between tasks or situations. Lastly, update correlates to the capacity to retain information in the brain (working memory) and replace it with newer information when necessary (Wong et al, 2015).