Cognitive Benefits of Bilingualism

In stark contrast to early suspicions that bilingual children were at risk of retardation or at best, “mentally confused” (Bialystok, 2005), recent research links bilingualism to cognitive reserve and suggests it may offer protection against dementia in old age. Cognitive reserve describes a kind of resilience which appears to mediate the relationship between brain pathology and the clinical expression of that pathology; it is thought that this resilience derives from more efficient use o...

 The Bilingual Advantage in Computer Programmers

Like bilinguals, expert computer programmers successfully manage two or more separate lexicons, grammars and divergent concepts, avoiding inadvertent transfer between the two. Numerous studies of novice programmers indicate that they struggle to do achieve this division; transfer from natural language creates bugs (e.g. Soloway and Spohrer, 1989; Witschital, 1995). The present study therefore considers whether the “bilingual advantage” in executive control is found in computer programmers...