bilingualism delays dementia

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on web of language:

Another benefit of bilingualism: it delays dementia

"Researchers at Toronto’s Baycrest Centre for Aging are reporting  
'that the lifelong use of two languages can help delay the onset of  
dementia by four years compared to people who are monolingual' ....  
There’s bad news in this research for immigration reformers.  Most of  
the subjects in the Toronto study were not Quebeckers fluent in  
French and English, as one might expect, but immigrants to  
Canada ....  But the Toronto study does raise an important concern  
for people who have only one language.  If bilingualism promotes  
mental health, then monolingualism might subvert it, and a public  
policy that pushes monolingualism may not be in the national  
interest...."

read more at
The Web of Language.

note: there seems to be a paragraphing problem on the blog today --  
ie, the paragraphs and links in this post have disappeared, and I  
can't edit them back in. earlier posts seem unharmed.  I've alerted  
the webgurus, and am awaiting a fix.

Best,

Dennis



Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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