The 4 advantages of speaking several languages
Many people are very aware of some advantages that the learning new languages . Most of these strengths, however, are related to the application of language skills that have been acquired during this process.
Advantages of speaking several languages (being polilingüe is good!)
Despite this, some scientific studies suggest that a large part of these advantages of bilingualism could be found beyond the scope of languages. Specifically, it seems that the simple exercise of learning and speaking of several languages makes our brains more functional, useful or skillful in some aspects. These are four of the reasons why it is good to master more than one language:
1. It encourages creativity
On the one hand, there is scientific evidence that could indicate that bilingualism positively affects the development of a creative mind. This could be explained because the fact of thinking from two or more ways of coding our mental representations favors the appearance of a type of non-linear, that is to say, creative thinking. This kind of "lateral" thinking is characterized by jumping beyond a single cognitive scheme; scheme that allows our perception of the world but also makes it more hermetic and closed in on itself.
2. Improve attention control
At the same time, another study indicates that bilingualism helps shape a brain with greater capacity to pay attention to what is important and inhibit distractions, just as it allows you to change relatively easily from one object of attention to another. This can also translate into greater facilities to reach a good level of performance in any voluntary activity, especially if it takes place in a complex and changing environment. It is possible that this improvement in attention management is due to the continuous exercise of "filtering" that bilinguals have to do when they can imply an idea with a very broad repertoire of words in several languages.
3. Mitigate the symptoms of dementia
There are also data that support the ability of the bilingual body to delay and ameliorate the symptoms of dementia . Although dementia supposes the degradation of brain tissue, the fact of having mastered several languages creates alternative neuronal circuits that, in the absence of the connections that have been disappearing due to dementia, can help to maintain a level of adaptation to the outside for a longer time .
4. Improve the control of executive tasks
Finally, there is evidence about better control over novel tasks that have to be solved by reasoning . Bilinguals are more easily able to deal with problems that can only be solved by applying new rules, that is, to carry out activities that are not familiar enough for our brain to have automated. In this particular study, bilinguals showed greater performance in solving mathematical problems with which they were unfamiliar.
