Long-lasting effects of multilingual skills

Simona Montanari, PhD Professor, explains the long-lasting effects of multilingual skills and how they can help to keep your brain healthy as you get older
Long-Term Effects Of Multilingual Skills For Children
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Long-lasting effects of multilingual skills

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Multilingual skills can actually help people with aging or decrease the effects that happen with aging. What happens is that research has shown that older bilinguals develops symptoms of Alzheimer's and dimensia on an average of 5 years later for bilingual and multilingual individuals. This is because the constant use of two languages, having to choose between languages, suppress 1 and use the other increases the amount of work that they brain has to do. It gives more flexibility and continuous exercise to the brain. Therefore older bilinguals who use two languages all the time on an everyday basis have this increased ability to use their brain and to maintain cognitive functioning.

Simona Montanari, PhD Professor, explains the long-lasting effects of multilingual skills and how they can help to keep your brain healthy as you get older

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Simona Montanari, PhD

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Simona Montanari is Assistant Professor in the Department of Child and Family Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on language development and second language acquisition in childhood. She received a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern California specializing in language development in monolingual and multilingual children. Dr. Montanari has published her research in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and she is regularly invited to present on early bilingualism and trilingualism locally and internationally. Dr. Montanari has also been involved in the creation and implementation of an Italian-English dual language program in the Glendale Unified School District, for which she continues to work as a consultant. Dr. Montanari has two trilingual and tri-literate daughters, six and seven years of age.

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