A Candian study indicates that knowledge of two or more languages can play a significant role in staving off dementia. Multilingual people in the study began showing dementia symptoms an average of 4.1 years later than their unilingual counterparts. "How you learn the language probably doesn't make much difference; how good your grammar is probably doesn't matter." said principle investigator Ellen Bialystok. "What matters is that you have to manage two complete language systems at once."
Since previous research has found other mental workouts, like crossword puzzles, to be helpful as well, I'm now looking for a multi-lingual version of my World of Puzzles magazine....
Comments
It's good to know grammar doesn't count. Do you get bonus points for more languages?
Posted by
IrishOboe
on Saturday, January 13, 2007 at 11:40 am
The article didn't say, but I'm guessing the more the better. It seems to be the complexity of juggling them that matters.
Posted by
sursumcorda
on Saturday, January 13, 2007 at 11:45 am
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