Written by Not only is bilingualism or polyglotism beneficial to cross-cultural relations and integration into a foreign culture, but early language learning has also been shown to boost cognitive abilities across the board.
These past two weeks, we’ve discussed how language is learned through mind-mapping as early as infancy. We’ve also talked about how early foreign language learning can aid phonetic recognition.
But this isn’t the only benefit of learning a foreign language.
Studies show that the cognitive skills of elementary school children are improved by foreign language learning.
While intelligence and cognition aren’t one and the same, they are related and integrated.
Let’s see how.
The Ross Test
The Ross Test is used to analyze abstract and critical thinking skills.
Often, children who are thought to be “gifted” are evaluated using the Ross Test to screen them for inclusion in gifted programs.
This was one of the tests used in a study by Foster, K. M., & Reeves, C. K., to evaluate the cognitive abilities of foreign language students.
The Study: Cognitive & Metacognitive Processes
The cognitive and metacognitive processes of students learning French as a foreign language in elementary school were measured and analyzed over a two-year period.
Cognitive abilities are described by sharpbrains as:
“the brain-based skills and mental processes needed to carry out any task; [they] have to do with the mechanisms of how you learn, remember, and pay attention.”
Metacognition is the knowledge of one’s own cognitive processes.
With one 25-student control group that had no French instruction and three French-language groups, studying in the program for varying lengths of time, the study identified how foreign language learning might impact cognitive and metacognitive functions in each group.
Each French group received a half-hour of French language instruction following a half-hour of English basal reading daily, while the control group simply read in English for an hour.
The Results
Across the board, the foreign language groups scored significantly higher on the Ross Test, including the score of all of its cognitive functions, than did the control group. They also scored higher on Butterfly and Moths test.
Even more impressive is that the foreign language students excelled at evaluation tasks, which, in Bloom’s taxonomy, is one of the highest cognitive skills, just behind “creating.”
Those French language students who studied for the longest time period (24.5 months) also performed the best, while the scores of those who studied for 15.5 months and 6.5 months correlated linearly with that trend.
So, does early foreign language learning make you smarter?
Not directly.
But this study indicates learning a foreign language can give you the cognitive tools to be a better learner in general.
Success Across Cultures 