Anyone who learned a foreign language in high school knows that you spend a lot of time translating the things you see and hear from your native language to the foreign language and back. But what if you have two native languages?
My mother is bilingual. She speaks both Spanish and English fluently, without accent and, according to her, without translating back and forth. She has been bilingual since she could talk, developing both Spanish and English language at the same time, around the age of one. My grandparents report that she never treated the two languages as the same language. She also never mixed the two languages and she never spoke the wrong language to the wrong person.
Is there a difference in the brain activity of bilinguals who are bilingual at an early age, say five years old, compared to people who learn a language in early adulthood and beyond? Is my mom’s brain different from my own? According to one study, the answer is yes.
Participants in this study, which was conducted in Los Angeles, were Spanish-English bilinguals who had mastered both languages by the age of ten. There were 12 participants studied. In all cases, the participants were native Spanish speakers who were exposed to English at the age of 5. In all cases, the adult participants were in their twenties and tested as English-Language dominant, meaning that testing identified their dominant language as English.
During the study, participants were asked to name pictures. The prompt was given in either English or Spanish (“say” or “diga”) and the person was supposed to reply in the language of the prompt. The pattern of the prompt was changed during each set. Sometimes the languages alternated. Other times, the language was kept constant. Researchers wanted to know what happened in the brain when bilinguals were asked to switch languages frequently.
Studies have shown that early Spanish-English bilinguals show little evidence of separate neural systems for each language. In other words, they don’t translate in their heads.
The theory was, then, that they operated as if everything was all one language.
However, during the picture name game there was increased activity in Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex when switching between languages. The Prefrontal cortex is the region of the brain that works with long-term memory tasks, not language. It is not normally associated with language functions. The parietal lobes which control the reception and correlation of sensory information were very active as well.
The single-language tests revealed differences in areas used for language processing.
When the test required them to switch languages there was activity, not just in language centers, but also in areas of the brain involving memory, emotion, and feeling.
This finding suggests that early bilinguals involve more areas in the brain than just the language centers when manipulating two languages. While this finding is interesting, I would like to see more research done. There were only twelve subjects. They are all bilingual starting at of the age of 5. What if the person is bilingual from birth, like my mother?
Would that make a difference? Would her brain operate more like a mono-lingual or like a bilingual brain?
This is relevant to therapy for brain injury. If an early bilingual person has a stroke that impacts language, do they have a higher chance of recovery because they use more of their brain for language? This is where I think the research should go next.
Hernandez, A. E. (2009). Language switching in the bilingual brain: What’s next? Brain and Language, 109(2-3), 133-140. Doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2008.12.005
I always found people who were bilingual to be very impressive and was always envious. To have the cognitive ability to be able to go back and forth between languages definitely shows higher brain power and thinking. There are several people in my life who are bilingual, my parents and grandparents, and they are some of the smartest people I know. It is known that the prime time to learn a language is early in life and I wonder if learning a language earlier caused a person to be smarter in life. This article is very interesting on bilingualism and i recommend to read! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html
I really enjoyed reading this blog, and it caught my eye because I take Spanish and it is not my best subject… so I definitely wanted to read to see how speaking two languages can affect your brain (maybe I don’t use that part). You made me very curious about your question, “What if the person is bilingual from birth?”. I researched this and found this awesome link that actually takes a closer look at this question: http://www.livescience.com/13016-bilingual-babies-brain-language-learning.html
This article says that learning two languages at once, as a baby, the babies do something called code-switching. This is when the kid distinguishes the difference in languages, lets say if one part were bilingual and was was not. This gives the babies a lot more to learn and comprehend at such a young age, but this is what makes them so smart as they grow older. Very interesting topic adn questions that you brought up(:
I really enjoyed reading this blog, and it caught my eye because I take Spanish and it is not my best subject… so I definitely wanted to read to see how speaking two languages can affect your brain (maybe I don’t use that part). You made me very curious about your question, “What if the person is bilingual from birth?”. I researched this and found this awesome link that actually takes a closer look at this question: http://www.livescience.com/13016-bilingual-babies-brain-language-learning.html
This article says that learning two languages at once, as a baby, the babies do something called code-switching. This is when the kid distinguishes the difference in languages, lets say if one part were bilingual and was was not. This gives the babies a lot more to learn and comprehend at such a young age, but this is what makes them so smart as they grow older. Very interesting topic and* questions that you brought up(:
I was drawn to this post because both of my parents are bilingual which made this seem like a very interesting topic for me. However, I am not bilingual so this post helped to put it in perspective. I like how you noted how to improve the study because you do make a very good point as to how there are only 12 participants. In order for a study to be more effective I believe there has to be more subjects in order to get a better conclusion. Being bilingual does have certain advantages. For example, in 2004, a study was conducted revolving around the question are people who are bilingual smarter? The study proved yes. If you would like a more in depth analysis of this question please click on the following link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html
First, let me just say that this was SUCH an interesting post to read. Growing up in a culturally diverse area, many of my classmates were bilingual, and it never really struck me to realize how much more brain activity is required when you know two languages. I found an article online that explains that since bilingual people are constantly switching back and forth, certain regions in their brain literally grow stronger in amount/mass of neural substance. So, in a way – I guess bilinguals really do use more of their brain!
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201606/what-is-different-in-the-bilingual-brain