Bilingual advantage for working memory

10 May

Is there a bilingual advantage for working memory? A paper published in Learning and Individual Differences suggests that there is.

Since bilingual individuals must often process two languages simultaneously, it seems reasonable to suspect that the extra cognitive work might confer benefits. Here are the highlights of the paper:

• The four working memory component model exists in mono- and bilingual 8–12 year-old children.
• Working memory construct is conceptualized similarly in mono- and bilingual 8–12 year-old children.
• There were significant differences in the latent factors means that favored the bilinguals in the four WM components.

There is evidence that bilingual individuals are more resistant to dementia.