{"id":1606,"date":"2017-01-27T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T08:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=1606"},"modified":"2017-12-30T16:48:25","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T16:48:25","slug":"bilingual-advantage-efficient-processing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/bilingual-advantage-efficient-processing\/","title":{"rendered":"Bilingual Advantage: Efficient Processing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/AdobeStock_65001066_Credit.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1611 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/AdobeStock_65001066_Credit-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"AdobeStock_65001066_Credit\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/AdobeStock_65001066_Credit-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/AdobeStock_65001066_Credit-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Recently, I linked to a study suggesting potential downsides to bilingualism: in at least <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0010027716300361\" target=\"_blank\">this one study<\/a>, bilingual students were less successful with metacognition than monolingual students.<\/p>\n<p>In that post, I noted that this one detriment doesn&#8217;t mean that bilinguals are &#8220;bad at thinking&#8221; in some broad way, or that bilingual education is necessarily a bad idea. Instead, that study was one interesting data point in a large and complex discussion.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that discussion has gotten even larger and more complex. A research team at the University of Montreal has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0911604416300124\" target=\"_blank\">explored<\/a> the neural mechanisms that help adult bilinguals focus on some information without being distracted by other kinds of information.<\/p>\n<p>Neuroscience is always complicated, but the simple version is this: bilinguals use more efficient networks to maintain focus on a particular information stream.<\/p>\n<p>In other words: we&#8217;ve got research showing both advantages (efficient attention processing) and disadvantages (reduced metacognition) to bilingualism. So, what should we do?<\/p>\n<p>In the end, teachers and parents can draw on research to explore these questions, but we must put many conflicting pieces together to draw the wisest conclusions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I linked to a study suggesting potential downsides to bilingualism: in at least this one study, bilingual students were less successful with metacognition than monolingual students. In that post, I noted that this one detriment doesn&#8217;t mean that bilinguals are &#8220;bad at thinking&#8221; in some broad way, or that bilingual education is necessarily a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31,13],"class_list":["post-1606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-attention","tag-bilingual-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1606"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1608,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1606\/revisions\/1608"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}