Research demonstrates that bilingual children develop greater mental flexibility, a finer grasp of abstract concepts and stronger working memory…. The bilingual person is primed, therefore, in a way that monolinguals are not, to seek out and, at times separate, the meaning that a person is trying to convey from the words they are using to do so; the message becomes an abstraction embedded within the words – their setting.

In a study headed up by Ellen Bialystok at 91��ɫ [Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health] in Toronto, two groups of children – each group was comparable but differed in that one was composed exclusively of monolingual students and the other contained only bilingual students – were asked whether the sentence, "Do apples have noses?" was grammatically correct. The monolinguals were stumped. The bilinguals responded something like this, "The sentence is silly but grammatically correct." From this and other similar studies, Bialystok sums up the results of her overall findings this way: "Bilinguals we found manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important."

Willingness to accept the possibility that what one hears is not always what the other means to say is an important step in the direction of creating and maintaining emotional safety in your relationship…. This is one definition of mindful listening.

Posted by Arielle Zomer, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Her good news: Among other benefits, the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychology at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Health] in Toronto, was for her contributions to social science. We spoke for two hours in a Washington hotel room in February and again, more recently, by telephone. An edited version of the two conversations follows.

Q. How did you begin studying bilingualism?

A. You know, I didn’t start trying to find out whether bilingualism was bad or good. I did my doctorate in psychology: on how children acquire language. When I finished graduate school, in 1976, there was a job shortage in Canada for PhDs. The only position I found was with a research project studying second language acquisition in school children. It wasn’t my area. But it was close enough.

As a psychologist, I brought neuroscience questions to the study, like “How does the acquisition of a second language change thought?” It was these types of questions that naturally led to the bilingualism research. The way research works is, it takes you down a road. You then follow that road.

Q. So what exactly did you find on this unexpected road?

A. As we did our research, you could see there was a big difference in the way monolingual and bilingual children processed language. We found that if you gave 5- and 6-year-olds language problems to solve, monolingual and bilingual children knew, pretty much, the same amount of language.

But on one question, there was a difference. We asked all the children if a certain illogical sentence was grammatically correct: “Apples grow on noses.” The monolingual children couldn’t answer. They’d say, “That’s silly” and they’d stall. But the bilingual children would say, in their own words, “It’s silly, but it’s grammatically correct.” The bilinguals, we found, manifested a cognitive system with the ability to attend to important information and ignore the less important.

Q. How does this work – do you understand it?

A. Yes. There’s a system in your brain, the executive control system. It’s a general manager. Its job is to keep you focused on what is relevant, while ignoring distractions. It’s what makes it possible for you to hold two different things in your mind at one time and switch between them.

If you have two languages and you use them regularly, the way the brain’s networks work is that every time you speak, both languages pop up and the executive control system has to sort through everything and attend to what’s relevant in the moment. Therefore the bilinguals use that system more, and it’s that regular use that makes that system more efficient.

Q. One of your most startling recent findings is that bilingualism helps forestall the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. How did you come to learn this?

A. We did two kinds of studies. In the first, published in 2004, we found that normally aging bilinguals had better cognitive functioning than normally aging monolinguals. Bilingual older adults performed better than monolingual older adults on executive control tasks. That was very impressive because it didn’t have to be that way. It could have turned out that everybody just lost function equally as they got older.

That evidence made us look at people who didn’t have normal cognitive function. In our next studies, we looked at the medical records of 400 Alzheimer’s patients. On average, the bilinguals showed Alzheimer’s symptoms five or six years later than those who spoke only one language. This didn’t mean that the bilinguals didn’t have Alzheimer’s. It meant that as the disease took root in their brains, they were able to continue functioning at a higher level. They could cope with the disease for longer.

Q. So high school French is useful for something other than ordering a special meal in a restaurant?

A. Sorry, no. You have to use both languages all the time. You won’t get the bilingual benefit from occasional use.

Q. One would think bilingualism might help with multitasking – does it?

A. Yes, multitasking is one of the things the executive control system handles. We wondered, “Are bilinguals better at multitasking?” So we put monolinguals and bilinguals into a driving simulator. Through headphones, we gave them extra tasks to do – as if they were driving and talking on cellphones. We then measured how much worse their driving got. Now, everybody’s driving got worse. But the bilinguals, their driving didn’t drop as much. Because adding on another task while trying to concentrate on a driving problem, that’s what bilingualism gives you – though I wouldn’t advise doing this.

Q. Has the development of new neuroimaging technologies changed your work?

A. Tremendously. It used to be that we could only see what parts of the brain lit up when our subjects performed different tasks. Now, with the new technologies, we can see how all the brain structures work in accord with each other.

In terms of monolinguals and bilinguals, the big thing that we have found is that the connections are different. So we have monolinguals solving a problem, and they use X systems, but when bilinguals solve the same problem, they use others. One of the things we’ve seen is that on certain kinds of even nonverbal tests, bilingual people are faster. Why? Well, when we look in their brains through neuroimaging, it appears like they’re using a different kind of a network that might include language centres to solve a completely nonverbal problem. Their whole brain appears to rewire because of bilingualism.

Q. Bilingualism used to be considered a negative thing – at least in the United States. Is it still?

A. Until about the 1960s, the conventional wisdom was that bilingualism was a disadvantage. Some of this was xenophobia. Thanks to science, we now know that the opposite is true.

Q. Many immigrants choose not to teach their children their native language. Is this a good thing?

A. I’m asked about this all the time. People e-mail me and say, “I’m getting married to someone from another culture, what should we do with the children?” I always say, “You’re sitting on a potential gift.”

There are two major reasons people should pass their heritage language onto children. First, it connects children to their ancestors. The second is my research: Bilingualism is good for you. It makes brains stronger. It is brain exercise.

Q. Are you bilingual?

A. Well, I have fully bilingual grandchildren because my daughter married a Frenchman. When my daughter announced her engagement to her French boyfriend, we were a little surprised. It’s always astonishing when your child announces she’s getting married. She said, “But Mom, it’ll be fine, our children will be bilingual!”

Bialystok also holds an appointment at in Toronto. Her interview was featured on the front page of The New 91��ɫ Times and was the site's most emailed story on May 31, 2011.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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These benefits come from having a brain that’s constantly juggling two – or even more – languages, said Ellen Bialystok, [Distinguished Research Professor in Psychology, ] at 91��ɫ in Toronto, who spoke at the AAAS annual meeting. For instance, a person who speaks both Hindi and Tamil can’t turn Tamil off even if he’s speaking to only Hindi users, because the brain is constantly deciding which language is most appropriate for a given situation.

This constant back-and-forth between two linguistic systems means frequent exercise for the brain’s so-called executive control functions, located mainly in the prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain tasked with focusing one’s attention, ignoring distractions, holding multiple pieces of information in mind when trying to solve a problem, and then flipping back and forth between them.

“If you walk into a room, there are a million things that could attract your attention,” Bialystok said. “How is it we manage to focus at all? How does our mind pay attention to what we need to pay attention to without getting distracted?”

To test one’s ability to identify pertinent nuggets while being bombarded with extraneous information, scientists use something called the Stroop test. Subjects are presented with a word for a particular colour and asked to identify the colour of ink it’s printed in. So if the word is “blue” and it’s printed in blue, no problem. If, on the other hand, the word “blue” is printed in red, they have to sort out which piece of information – the colour of the ink, or the colour being spelled out – is the one they need.

“This is extremely hard to do, because it’s terribly difficult to block out the information from the word,” Bialystok said.

In monolingual speakers, this kind of mental curveball will add 240 milliseconds to their reaction time – a significant delay, in brain reaction terms. Bilingual people, on the other hand, take just 160 extra milliseconds to sort this out. Bialystok theorizes that it’s because they’re used to prioritizing information in potentially confusing situations all day.alz

Those advantages aren’t just useful for schoolchildren – they last over the course of a lifetime. A study published last year in the journal Neurology surveyed 211 patients diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and found that those who spoke only one language saw the onset of their first symptoms four to five years earlier than their bilingual peers. While knowing two languages doesn’t fight the disease, it does strengthen those parts of the brain that are susceptible to dementia’s early attacks, allowing them to withstand the assault much longer.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The more proficient you become, the better, but "every little bit helps," said Ellen Bialystok, a psychology professor at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Health].

Much of the study of bilingualism has centered on babies, as scientists wondered why simply speaking to infants in two languages allows them to learn both in the time it takes most babies to learn one. Their brains seem to become more flexible, better able to multi-task. As they grow up, their brains show better "executive control," a system key to higher functioning – as Bialystok puts it, "the most important part of your mind."

Bialystok studied 450 Alzheimer's patients, all of whom showed the same degree of impairment at the time of diagnosis. Half are bilingual – they've spoken two languages regularly for most of their lives. The rest are monolingual.

The bilingual patients had Alzheimer's symptoms and were diagnosed between four and five years later than the patients who spoke only one language, she told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Being bilingual does nothing to prevent Alzheimer's disease from striking. But once the disease does begin its silent attack, those years of robust executive control provide a buffer so that symptoms don't become apparent as quickly, Bialystok said. "They've been able to cope with the disease," she said.

Her work supports an earlier study from other researchers that also found a protective effect.

But people don't have to master a new language to benefit some, Bialystok said. Exercising your brain throughout life contributes to what's called "cognitive reserve", the overall ability to withstand the declines of aging and disease. That's the basis of the use-it-or-lose-it advice from aging experts, who also recommend such things as crossword puzzles to keep your brain nimble. "If you start to learn at 40, 50, 60, you are certainly keeping your brain active," she said.

Newspapers and online news sites around the world reported on Bialystok’s lecture remarks, including media across Canada, the US, Australia, Bangladesh, China, England, Iran, Ireland, India, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Qatar, South Africa, Scotland and Wales.

Bialystok’s study was also features in stories on radio and television stations around the world, including major networks in the US and Canada.

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In a soon to be published study three researchers from Baycrest – Ellen Bialystok, Fergus Craik and Morris Freedman – found in a study of more than 100 bilingual patients and 100 monolingual patients that the bilinguals experienced the onset of symptoms and were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease between four and five years later than monolingual patients.

Bialystok, distinguished research professor in psychology in 91��ɫ’s , Craik, a senior scientist at Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, and Freedman, a neurologist at Baycrest, confirmed results from an earlier study in which they examined hospital records from about 100 bilingual and 100 monolingual patients.

Bialystok's research was profiled by .

She also for Discovery News:

A new study from the University of California, Los Angeles has revealed that the ability to speak multiple languages is associated with better mental capacities.

“Being able to use two languages and never knowing which one you’re going to use right now rewires your brain,” Discovery News quoted Ellen Bialystok, distinguished research professor of psychology in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Health, whose work has been cited by Jared Diamond of the University of California in his article.

Bialystok also added that bilinguals fare better at multitasking tasks, including ones that simulated driving and talking on a phone. However, being able to speak more than one language comes at a cost, she said. “Bilinguals have more 'tip-of-the-tongue’ problems,” Bialystock said. “Bilingual children have on average a smaller vocabulary in each of their languages than monolingual children,” she added.

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Over time, regularly speaking more than one language appears to strengthen skills that boost the brain’s so-called cognitive reserve, a capacity to work even when stressed or damaged. This build-up of cognitive reserve appears to help bilingual people as they age.

“Speaking two languages isn’t going to do anything to dodge the bullet” of getting Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, says Ellen Bialystok, Distinguished Research Professor in Psychology in 91��ɫ’s . But greater cognitive reserve means the “same as the reserve tank in a car: Once the brain runs out of fuel, it can go a little farther,” she says.

Specifically, the advantages of bilingualism are thought to be related to a brain function known as inhibitory or cognitive control: the ability to stop paying attention to one thing and focus on something else, says Bialystok. Fluent speakers of more than one language have to use this skill continually to silence one language in their minds while communicating in another.

. . .

Dr. Bialystok began her decades-long research by studying how children learn a second language. In 2004, she and her colleague Fergus Craik shifted to conduct three studies looking at the cognitive effects in some 150 monolingual and bilingual people between 30 and 80 years old.

They found that in both middle and old age, the bilingual subjects were better able to block out distracting information than the single-language speakers in a series of computerized tests. The advantage was even more pronounced in the older subjects.

Dr. Bialystok says other research also shows better performance from bilingual people on tests requiring cognitive control, such as when they are instructed to determine whether a sentence is grammatically correct, even if the content doesn't make sense.

For example, in distinguishing, "apples grow on trees" from "apple trees on grow" and "apples grow on noses," the third sentence requires people to focus on the structure and suppress paying attention to the meaning of the words.

The findings from the 2004 study led Dr. Bialystok to wonder whether these benefits might help older people compensate for age-related losses in learning.

She and her colleagues examined the medical records of 228 memory-clinic patients who had been diagnosed with different kinds of dementia, two-thirds with Alzheimer's disease.

The results, published in the journal in 2007, suggested that bilingual patients exhibit problematic memory problems later than those who only spoke one language.

Bilingual patients were, on average, four years older than single-language speakers when their families first noticed memory problems, or when the patient first came to the clinic seeking treatment.

Moreover, bilingual patients' memories were no worse than those of single-language speakers by the time they arrived at the clinic, and there was no difference in the length of time between the detection of symptoms and when the patients were first checked in.

In a subsequent study, Dr. Bialystok and her colleagues looked at brain images of monolingual and bilingual Alzheimer's patients at the same age and stage of disease.

They found that the brains of the bilingual people appeared to be in worse physical condition. This suggests that bilingualism doesn't delay the disease process itself, but rather helps bilingual individuals better handle memory deficits, Dr. Bialystok says.

. . .

Dr. Bialystok's group is now conducting a study testing patients every six months to measure the rate of mental decline over the course of dementia.

Bialystok's research was also covered by the Oct. 12.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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“It raises some serious questions,” says Martel, who holds the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History. “What did they do with the information?”

Martel, along with co-author , a history professor at Laval University, cover 400 years of language issues in Canada – since the arrival of the first non-native – in their recently released book, . About half of it deals with the last 100 years, including the Quiet Revolution and the Official Language Act. Martel and Pâquet received a two-year Language Policy & Minority Rights grant from the Official Languages Issues in Canada Strategic Grants Program to research material for the book, which, at the moment, is only available in French.

“One of the reasons we wrote the book was to give a sense of where we’re coming from when we talk about language in Canada. It has characterized the way the country has developed since the arrival of the first non-native. This is not only about Quebec, the whole country has had to deal with this issue and it’s a very divisive issue,” says Martel. It’s reassuring to know that language issues have been with us for a long time, he says. They have not just appeared in the last 50 or so years.

But what surprised him was that the federal government felt it necessary for the RCMP to keep files on anyone involved in either side of the bilingualism debate during the 1960s and 1970s. The goal was to assess whether any one person or group constituted a national threat, to prevent social chaos and to ascertain if there were foreign spies behind the scenes, Martel says. But it was also part of a larger stalling tactic by the government to keep the status quo, as were the use of royal commissions and committees to study the issue.

Even today, the RCMP won’t release many of the documents from that time period saying they could constitute a security risk or jeopardize the conduct of international affairs or the defence of Canada, says Martel. When a document is released, most of it is usually blacked out.

Left: Marcel Martel

What the authors found, despite the government’s wish that the language issue would disappear, is that change was instigated not by MPs and other government officials, but by individuals. “It is people that forced government to deal with the issue,” says Martel. “The citizen, through demonstrations and petitions, has played a large role in the development of language policy in Canada.” The extent of that role surprised Martel.

He gives the example of Georges Forest, a Manitoba man in the mid-1970s who received a parking ticket or something similar, in English only. He was so mad he decided to challenge not the ticket itself, but the fact that it was not also in French. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court which .

Martel also outlines how French-speaking parents won the right to send their kids to French-speaking schools outside of Quebec, run by French-speaking administrators. In 1982, Section 23 of the Constitution came into existence, which guaranteed this right to parents no matter where in Canada they live.

The language rights issue, however, is still far from over, he says. This is clear by the latest struggle in Moncton, New Brunswick, over calls for store signs to be posted in both official languages. It will be an issue that continues to shape Canada well into the future.

In addition, the Fédération des communautés francophones et acadienne du Canada has recently asked the federal court to intervene in the ongoing census debate, arguing that the long-term census form should remain because governments need the data on languages spoken at home.

Martel has already begun researching his next project, which will deal with the RCMP’s surveillance activities and operations regarding French-speaking groups, natives and African Canadians from about 1945 to 1984 when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was created and took over the surveillance and security intelligence job. He has already published a paper in the Canadian Historical Review in June 2009 that looks at the RCMP and hippies, titled '', which he says “will in part contribute to the growing literature on state repression.”

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer

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Bialystok, a Distinguished Research Professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, is known internationally for her research on language, bilingualism and cognitive development. She received the award April 13 from the , which administers the .

The clip is and runs for approximately seven minutes.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of 91��ɫ's Media Relations Department.

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Bialystok, a Distinguished Research Professor in 91��ɫ’s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, is known internationally for her research on language, bilingualism and cognitive development. She received the award this morning from the , which administers the .

One of the most important research prizes in the world, the $100,000 Killam Prize is annually awarded to five eminent Canadian scholars for their distinction in health sciences, engineering, humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. Bialystok was recognized for her work in the social sciences category.

Right: Ellen Biaylstok

The first in her field to research claims of cognitive deficits in bilingual children, Bialystok discovered that bilingual children and adults have distinct advantages over unilingual people when completing both linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks. Her research is now revealing that this advantage continues for bilingual people as they age.

She has also been recognized by the international linguistics community for her body of work on theories of language processing and on practical issues related to foreign and second language education.

“The Killam Prize recognizes Professor Bialystok’s groundbreaking contributions to psychology and confirms the international excellence of her achievements,” said 91��ɫ President & Vice-Chancellor Mamdouh Shoukri. “Her success contributes to the growing national and international leadership of 91��ɫ’s faculty in health related-research as they respond to medical, social, and environmental challenges facing Canadians and people around the world.”

Bialystok was awarded a in 2001. She is a . In November, she received the 91��ɫ in recognition of her research contributions.

"Ellen is a remarkable researcher who is so deserving of the Killam Prize," said Stan Shapson, vice-president, research & innovation. "Her work is cited all over the world. She has also received funding from all three of Canada's national funding bodies − the , the and the − at various points in her career, along with funding from the ."

Bialystok has developed new methodologies for studying the role of cognitive processes on second language learning as well as the impact that knowing a second language has on cognitive aging.

“By studying people of all ages, and using both behavioural and neuroimaging approaches, Professor Bialystok is changing our understanding of language acquisition and literacy, as well as cognition and aging," said Faculty of Health Dean Harvey Skinnner. "Her research, and the collaborative research of many other faculty researching developmental and cognitive processes, reflects the Faculty's goals of innovative research that helps keep more people healthier, longer."

Bialystok has recently published research on how bilingualism boosts children’s focus. She has also researched how bilingualism can delay the onset of dementia.

By Janice Walls, media relations coordinator.

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Bilingualism gives children a distinct cognitive advantage over their monolingual peers, says a study by 91��ɫ psychology Professor Ellen Bialystok.

The study, published in the journal Developmental Psychology, finds that bilingual children outperform monolingual students on tasks involving executive control – the cognitive processes that allow for abstract thinking, planning, initiating and inhibiting actions. Three separate experiments on six-year-old students demonstrated that children who routinely speak more than one language can better focus on pertinent information and suppress their attention to distracting or irrelevant items.

Right: Ellen Bialystok

“This ability to selectively focus on wanted information and ignore distracting elements is a central feature of all higher thought," says study author Bialystok, a Distinguished Research Professor of Psychology in 91��ɫ’s . "These results have implications for our overall understanding of how bilingualism influences cognitive development in its early stages," she says.

Researchers evaluated bilingual and monolingual children attending the same public school in a middle-class neighbourhood of Toronto. Bilingual students spoke a language other than English at home, including Cantonese, French, Russian, Mandarin, Urdu, Hindi and Spanish. Six-year-olds were selected as they are at a critical stage in their cognitive development: previous studies have established this as the age at which measurable differences in the brains of bilingual children appear.

Participants were tested using standardized neuropsychological tests, including the global-local task and the trail-making test (TMT). The latter is widely used to assess brain functioning in both children and adults, and to diagnose learning disabilities.

The TMT requires subjects to create a sequence, either by connecting scattered numbers in a continuous order, or alternating numbers with corresponding letters of the alphabet. During this test, children need to hold in mind the current place in the sequence while searching for the next element through a distracting space filled with other digits.

“The surprising finding on the TMT was that bilingual children not only performed better than monolingual children on the difficult condition that involved alternating between letters and numbers but also on the simple condition in which they just connected consecutive numbers,” says Bialystok.

The global-local task investigates the ability to perceptually zoom in and out, successfully delineating a system from its parts. Usually, global information is processed faster and interferes with the identification of local elements.

To complete both these tasks, participants must employ critical executive functions, including inhibition (ignoring misleading cues), updating (monitoring a display in the context of current instructions) and switching (adjusting one’s response according to instructions).

Results show that bilingual children develop executive control over a broad range of processes, not only via inhibition and conflict resolution, as suggested by previous research.

Monolingual and bilingual children also performed similarly on tests of vocabulary, digit span, verbal fluency and box completion; where there were differences, it was the monolinguals who achieved slightly higher scores. Bilinguals obtained slightly lower scores on vocabulary and forward digit span but performed significantly better in all aspects of the TMT and global-local tasks. They completed the tasks more rapidly and more accurately than the monolinguals.

“This doesn’t mean that bilinguals are simply faster responders,” says Bialystok. “Both groups completed the control conditions for these tests at the same speed, which rules out basic response speed as the sole explanation for group differences.”

Bialystok also emphasizes the diagnostic implications of her research. Since the TMT is used to establish the presence of learning disabilities such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it may not be valid for bilingual students.

“Diagnostic tools may need to be adjusted somewhat if bilingualism – which is so common – can modify children’s performance, and perhaps confuse results,” she says.

The study, “,” was published in January 2010.

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