Keywords: change in communication, cross-cultural, multilingual, attention

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BARCELOS-FERREIRA, Ricardo. University of São Paulo. Is there any cognitive benefit of being or becoming bilingual? Today, more of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual than monolingual. In addition to facilitating cross-cultural communication, this trend also positively affects cognitive abilities. Researchers have shown that the bilingual brain can have better attention and task-switching capacities than the monolingual brain, thanks to its developed ability to inhibit one language while using another. In addition, bilingualism has positive effects at both ends of the age spectrum: Bilingual children as young as seven months can better adjust to environmental changes, while bilingual seniors can experience less cognitive decline. ResearchGate, Dec 11, 2012. Available from < https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_there_any_cognitive_benefit_of_being_or_becoming_bilingual >. access on 28 April 2014.

-- GregorioIvanoff - 28 Apr 2014