Learning a second language, at any age, leads to better cognitive abilities

Learn­ing sec­ond lan­guage ‘slows brain age­ing’ (BBC):

“Learn­ing a sec­ond lan­guage can have a pos­i­tive effect on the brain, even if it is tak­en up in adult­hood, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh study suggests…Using data from intel­li­gence tests on 262 Edin­burgh-born indi­vid­u­als at the age of 11, the study looked at how their cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties had changed when they were test­ed again in their sev­en­ties…195 learned the sec­ond lan­guage before the age of 18, and 65 learned it after that time.

The find­ings indi­cate that those who spoke two or more lan­guages had sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties com­pared to what would have been expect­ed from their base­line test…Dr Bak said the pat­tern they found was “mean­ing­ful” and the improve­ments in atten­tion, focus and flu­en­cy could not be explained by orig­i­nal intelligence.”

Study: “Does Bilin­gual­ism Influ­ence Cog­ni­tive Aging?” Thomas H Bak, Jack J Nis­san, Michael M Aller­hand and Ian J Deary. Annals of Neu­rol­o­gy; Pub­lished Online: June 2, 2014 (DOI:10.1002/ana.24158).

Relat­ed articles:

• The Cog­ni­tive Fit­ness Ben­e­fits of Being Bilingual
• Mas­ter a new lan­guage and grow hip­pocam­pus and cere­bral cortex