Learning Spanish delays dementia, study finds

Your struggles with Spanish could be doing your brain a lot of good

“Hablas vous Englisch?” No matter how garbled your attempts at mastering a foreign language, the mere act of trying to learn a new tongue can help keep the symptoms of dementia at bay, a new study by Edinburgh University has found.

Researchers found that, no matter your age, the benefits of learning a new language are the same. In studying cognitive functions of the brain, the team set out to find out whether people who already possessed a strong capacity for learning and memory were more likely to be able to learn a foreign language, or whether multilingual skills were the cause, rather than the effect, of increased brainpower…The study has been years in the making. Edinburgh University put out the call out for volunteers aged 70 and over who were capable of reading and writing in at least one other language, with English their mother tongue. After reviewing IQ tests carried out on the 262 volunteers at the age of 11, the same people were re-tested once again.

The results found that just 65 of those studied learnt a second language as adults, while the rest – nearly 200 – acquired their foreign language ability much earlier in life as children and teenagers.

Each of those tested were found to have a higher-than-average IQ and scored higher in cognitive tests than monolingual volunteers. Additionally, those who had a high IQ before they learnt a new language developed even greater intelligence, the study found.

The slow decline of cognitive abilities common with age was less noticeable among those who could speak a second language – evidence that such an ability could have a positive effect in tackling or delaying completely to onset of dementia.

And the real good news? The part of the brain that struggles to recall words, facts and figures was shown to be working overtime among those who were not completely bilingual but had to ‘search’ their brain for the right word.

So if learning Spanish feels like a continuous struggle to you, worry not: that ache you feel as you scour your mind for the correct preposition to use is actually doing your brain good in the long run. Complete fluency in two languages, however, may not challenge the cognitive functions quite so much, although the researchers stressed that further tests on this are required.