Bilingual Advantage

Bilingual Advantage
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Bilingual Advantage
            Bilingualism is the ability to speak and understand two languages. It starts from conversing in two different languages to later being very competent and function as a native speaker of both languages. Individuals are considered bilingual due to their ability to communicate orally in two different languages, while others can competently read and write in two or more languages. There are two types of bilingualism, which are simultaneous and sequential bilingualism. Simultaneous bilingualism occurs by virtue when a person grows up speaking two different languages simultaneously. Sequential bilingualism occurs when a person learns the second language after the first language. Research shows that half of the world’s population is either lingual or multilingual because of different cultural interactions, traveling, and studying in different areas that allow people from different to interact and learn from each other. Bilingualism has greatly affected the general way of living in the world today, both positively and negatively. The article's focus includes; background, theory, existence, and methods of testing bilingual advantage.
The Background of the Bilingual Advantage
Research indicates that bilingualism causes cognitive effects on childhood growth and has caused mixed reactions in identifying effects on intelligence and overall speech development. Evidence has shown that cognitive advantages are associated with inhibition control, inclusive execution control, switching of tasks, and formation of the concept, among many others. The recent consensus of researchers suggests that bilingual children are advanced in problem-solving that need inhibition of information misleading through execution control. Scientific research and beliefs have suggested that bilingual childhood has negative effects on mental development; learning two different languages can confuse the young mind causing mental retardation as the child is growing up. Peal and Lambert (1962) challenged the view that predicted bilingual children that learn English and French have low scores on verbal, intelligent tests but reasonably well in non-verbal tests (Duñabeitia & Carreiras, 2015). After the experiment, the results contradicted the previous theories. Bilingual children performed better than monolinguals in most of the tests. The difference indicates that more advanced to mental flexibility.
            The bilingual advantage must have risen due to mental flexibility that was caused by the use of two different languages simultaneously. Further research shows that there are added advantage's high ability of bilingual children to solve linguistics-based problems based on multilingual awareness, which depicts languages as a mode of solving nonverbal problems that inhibit misleading information. A study by Paap, Johnson, and saw (2015) on the performing executive function of bilingual individuals gives a comprehensive analysis of the results.  They came up with several critical topics from the previous studies done by other scholars on  “Bilingual advantage.” The areas addressed by the study include; methodological issues associated with sampling size, the behavior of individuals who participated in the study, and how bilingual and monolingual groups of individuals who participated in the study matched on social demographic factors (Duñabeitia & Carreiras, 2015). Statistical issues associated with the analyses of the studies and theoretical matters associated with the discrepancy of the results collected from tasks and teams of the individuals who participated in the research.
            While Paap et al. (2015) may be right, two significant issues can be considered in the future that includes; claims that the various issues of bilingual and monolingual individuals in consideration to the construction of EFs may be related to the age of a person when acquiring the second language. Researches have stated the benefit of inhibitory management of early bilinguals over monolinguals and late bilinguals. Initially, there was an argument that acquisition of the second language of infants may suggest improvement of additional non-lingual cognitive capabilities; crib bilingual does not give benefit over monolingual. A child can easily integrate into more languages need of any cognitive reconfiguration. Late bilinguals go through reconfiguring their mental experiences to deal with the freshly acquired linguistic skills while still using the other, resulting in cognitive enhancement (Duñabeitia & Carreiras, 2015). Intensive training and cross-sectional studies are a clear illustration that focuses on acquired cognitive skills that affect the improvement of attention skills—late bilingualism results in remarkable improvement in the execution of functions. The anatomical connection of the human brain should not be missed in consideration of how neural and behavioral analyses are put together in regards to misalignment problems. Current evidence shows that there is a generalization of differences between monolinguals and bilinguals that is rare and inconsistent. However, investigation on structural changes conducted on native and lately acquired bilinguals gives a good platform for better understanding bilingualism at cognitive levels. In that case, two caveats are made that are; inconsistent behavioral findings can be used to evaluate structural or functional brain differences. It is important to note that a variation in the brain's structural configuration does not give a clear understanding of how cognitive processes work in bilinguals and monolinguals.
Evidence of bilingual advantage
Behavioral studies indicate a better performance of bilinguals over monolinguals concerning task execution. The bilingual’s advantage is because of bilingual constants present in selecting the intended language to speak while suppressing the inactive language. The "Bilingual advantage" theory has controversies since not all studies highlight executive control. The inconsistencies caused by these studies have led to employed executive task control; a good example is maximization adaptations of the Simon task that have indicated bilingual advantage. At the same time, Stroop Task examples involve picture naming that does not support bilingual advantage. Simon's task avoids many mistakes that do not favor bilingual advantages by highlighting conditions that require high supervision. Another case study is the Franker Task that did not indicate the accuracy between bilinguals and monolinguals. All the tasks were associated with various aspects of executive control, but they mainly focused on inhibition. The tasks show only one cognitive process explaining the variation in performance between bilinguals and monolinguals. This has caused problems in research studies associated with bilingual advantage.
On the contrary, an associated task, the Attentional Network Task, was illustrated to stimulate a bilingual advantage, and the bilinguals demonstrated an advantage in reaction time as well as the effectiveness of response switching (Duñabeitia & Carreiras, 2015). Nonetheless, this outcome also relies on the involvement of situations that need high control and monitoring. Moreover, whereas there are many tests connected to the executive control (EC), they tap into various features of EC and to changing degrees. Besides, the assumption that these tasks map onto one cognitive process (for example, inhibition), which elucidates the variations in performance between monolinguals and bilinguals, might be problematic. As an alternative, bilingualism might signify a more general practical reconfiguration, which is manifest in numerous processes. With all consideration, this leads to a challenge for research and studies and clinical assessment of the executive control functions, and this has been a significant reason for the uncertainty regarding bilingual advantage theory.
Due to these uncertainties, other research methods had to use other methods, such as comparing the grey matter volume (GMV) of monolingual and bilingual adults. A grey matter volume difference provides anatomical indications of accumulated experience-reliant variations because of cognitive control in bilinguals in comparison with the monolinguals. Therefore, the study evaluated whole-brain gray matter volume to capture the extensiveness of anatomical regions associated with the prefrontal cortex, forecasting that Spanish-English bilinguals would demonstrate more gray matter volume in the EC regions in comparison with English-speaking monolinguals, such as like other situations or contexts of lifelong skills determining brain framework. Instances of previous studies that have illustrated GMV variations between particular groups of people include the ones with diverse occupational experiences, for example, taxi drivers, who displayed more gray matter volumes in the hippocampus. Transformed sensory experiences, including deafness and blindness, have also been revealed to reflect in the gray matter variations in comparison with hearing and sighted groups. Moreover, longitudinal studies utilizing simple training procedures, including juggling, have illustrated induced gray matter volume variations in the extrastriate visual cortex. Concerning these, the research expected to discover greater GMV in the bilinguals in areas, which are recognized to be included in executive controls, particularly parietal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices.
Behavioral studies have displayed greater performance on the executive roles for bilinguals of two spoken languages compared to monolinguals. These are attributed to the long-term skills with choice and inhibition of two languages. Precisely, there is a reliable requirement for bilinguals to manage their two languages regarding the identification and to observe the language utilized by the speaker, choice of the relevant target language, and suppression or inhibition of the other language or non-target language, which are supposed to results in the benefits in EC perceived in bilinguals (Borsa et al., 2018). The research goals were to utilize a measure of brain anatomy to investigate the bilingual advantage theory. The study shows that long-life variations in executive control enforced by the management and control of two languages would be revealed in superior GMV, similar to other interpret...