Cristian Aranda Farías’ doctoral thesis shows that more frequency in the change between languages is related to better cognitive functions in the elderly.
With aging, the brain’s cognitive abilities may deteriorate to some degree. This process, which is caused by natural causes, implies that people may begin to manifest problems related to attention span, memory or reasoning. However, this deterioration does not occur in the same way in all individuals, since it is a process in which factors related to both genetic inheritance and lifestyle habits influence.
Regarding this, the doctoral thesis defended at the Universitat de les Illes Balears by Dr. Cristian Aranda Farías, a researcher at the University of Magallanes (Chile), analyzes the influence of bilingualism as a possible protective factor of cognitive functions in people of advanced age.
In order to determine this influence, the researcher compared monolingual older people with other bilingual ones. Half of the bilinguals were bilingual from a very young age (before the age of four) and the others from a more mature age (after the age of eighteen). In the study, 90 people participated, 60 of whom were bilingual with residence in Mallorca and 30 were monolingual and residents of the city of Punta Arenas, in Chile.
To avoid problems of validity of the results, some aspects that could generate confusion were previously analyzed, such as the socioeconomic level, the educational level, the cognitive reserve (a theoretical construct that integrates structural aspects of the brain and life experiences) and the age of the children participants. Thus, it was found that none of these preconditions was favorable to the group of bilingual people. Furthermore, the monolingual group was slightly younger.
All volunteers were tested on various cognitive functions, such as attention, flexibility, inhibition, short-term memory, and working memory. It was also analyzed whether aspects related to bilingualism, such as the age of acquisition of the second language, the frequency of change between languages and the mastery of each one, influenced the cognitive functioning of older people.
The results obtained by Dr. Aranda show that bilinguals, both those who are from a very young age and those who adopt another language at a later age, have better cognitive performance than monolinguals. It is also evidenced that the age of acquisition of a second language influences cognitive performance, which favors those who began to be bilingual when they were very young. Likewise, it has been proven that the more frequency of switching between languages, the better performance in cognitive functions. Finally, it is concluded that bilingualism acts as a protective factor on cognitive functioning and on the cognitive reserve in the elderly.