The Cognitive Neurology of Bilingualism in the Age of Globalization

As globalization advances, more people become bilingual or multilingual. Indeed, in the age of globalization, where people can connect through Internet to someone else across the globe, where the mass media provides information from around the globe, and where migration means multilingual and multicultural societies, the necessity of speaking more than a single language becomes more evident as never before. Some languages like English, French, and Spanish for cultural and political reasons are widespread because of their international use for communication, tourism, and trade. Some languages like Mandarin are emergent and are most likely about to substitute one or two of the aforementioned world languages in the future. As a matter of fact, modern world is becoming more bilingual and modern behavioural neurology and neuroscience must be prepared to deal with challenging research questions originating from the study of the bilingual brain. In general, a bilingual speaker may be someone with different levels of proficiency in the two languages, using the two languages in different contexts or learning a new language due to educational requirements, immigration, or other business and life demands. By this definition, a bilingual individual is not only necessarily someone who has acquired both languages from birth, or early in life, but also that one who learns a second language (L2) later in life. The different contexts and circumstances of L2 acquisition have important effects upon the cerebral organization of multiple languages. Moreover, having acquired more than one language, the bilingual or multilingual speaker may eventually encounter potential conflicts between languages, such as how to speak in one language while avoiding potential intrusions from the other. Problems like these are resolved by the intervention of a neurocognitive mechanism unique to bilinguals, that is, language control [1]. In the past, a lot of misleading information has circulated about the eventual cognitive effects of bilingualism such as bilingualism as being detrimental to the development of cognitive skills in children and that infants exposed simultaneously to two languages would suffer from an incomplete language acquisition. Nowadays, scientists have proven the contrary to be true. Researchers have clearly demonstrated that early bilingualism (i.e., if both languages are learned from early on in life) leads to cognitive advantages over lifespan. Bilinguals when compared to monolinguals are faster in information processing and conflict resolution in nonverbal tasks [2, 3]. Strikingly, these effects are already present in bilingual infants. Seven-month-old bilingual infants are able …