No more excuses: learning Spanish will help you delay dementia
Thursday, June 5, 2014 @ 3:06 PM
EXPATS struggling to get to grips with their Spanish should keep at it - because being able to speak, read or write one or more foreign languages slows down the ageing process in the brain, scientists reveal.
And the effect is the same whether you learn it as an adult or in earliest childhood.
Research by an Edinburgh University expert in loss of cognitive functions sought to find out whether foreign language abilities were the cause or the effect - whether learning a new tongue increased brainpower, or whether those who already had a strong capacity for learning and memory were more likely to learn a language.
IQ tests on 262 people from the Scottish capital carried out when they were aged 11 were studied, and the same people were re-tested once they were over 70.
Volunteers for the research had to be capable of speaking and writing in at least one foreign language, their mother tongue being English.
Only 65 of these had learnt their new language as adults, and the rest, in their childhood or teens.
Intelligence in general, eloquence, literacy and fluency in one's mother tongue with the ability to draw on a much wider vocabulary were found to be present in those who spoke at least one foreign language.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com