Fluent in both French and English, junior Eleanor Spolyar considers herself to be a bilingual. At home, Spolyar’s mom speaks to her in French while her dad speaks to her in English.

Spolyar said, “When I come home from school, my mom might say, ‘Oh, how are you?’ in French, and then my dad might say the same thing in English. I’ll answer my dad in English, and then, I’ll answer my mom in French. I don’t really realize the difference (between the languages) or think about it; it just comes like naturally. I think that means I’m flexible, and it’s an advantage.”

Spolyar is not alone. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, bilingualism is on the rise with 21 percent of  school-aged children in America currently speaking a language other than English at home. Flexibility is just one of the many advantages bilinguals have. According to Fred Genesee, a psychology professor at McGill University, bilinguals also have advantages in areas related to spacial processing or numeric processing, so it is not specific to language, and they have better executive control functions in their brain than monolinguals. When a person learns two languages, Genesee said, he has to be vigilant in which language he is hearing, and in learning two languages he has to control their attention, inhibit and divert their attention in other cases selectively intended.

Genesee said, “As they are listening to language…they aren’t doing it subconsciously; they have to be sensitive to which language is being used and which language they use. There’s a kind of mental agility that is involved when you learn and use two languages. Because there are two of them, it’s that kind of mental agility and flexibility that gives you an advantage.”

Spolyar said the switch from speaking English to French in her household demonstrates her mental flexibility.

She said, “I do agree that being bilingual can give someone an increased flexibility because it shows at my house. When I talk to my parents, I just respond in both languages and (don’t) have to stop and think about it. I’m pretty good at multitasking, like juggling things around.”

Junior Ana Carolina Corey, who speaks both Portuguese and English fluently and also takes French IV here, said she agrees that knowing more than one language can make a person more flexible as shown through her ability to switch languages quickly and in her multitasking.

“My mom speaks Portuguese, and my dad speaks just English, so I’ll be going back and forth with them. In being bilingual, you always have multiple languages running through your brain, so I guess it helps with multitasking, and I multitask a lot,” Corey said. “I have friends that speak only one language who have trouble thinking about multiple things at once. I’ll think about two or three different things at the same time, and it’s not overwhelming.”

Genesee said another area in which bilinguals are significantly better than monolinguals is in tasks  where they have to inhibit attention to information which is misleading and concentrate on information that is relevant to the task. Bilinguals, he said, are better at solving puzzles if there is conflicting information that they need to ignore, so they can better focus their attention on relevant information.

Genesee said, “Most evidence in favor from differences comes from experimental procedures, and if the problems in the experiment require ruling out alternatives that are misleading and focusing on the right answer, then, yes, bilinguals might be better than monolinguals in that situation. Being bilingual has a potential cognitive advantage in problem solving to be more focused.”

Corey said she personally is able to ignore distractions well and focus on what is important. She said, “If  there was a screaming kid in the backseat while I was driving, I think I’d be able to ignore him and drive safely. When I study, I’m fairly good at ignoring distractions.”

Spolyar said she is also able to easily avoid distractions and stay focused.

“If I need to get something done, I get it done,” Spolyar said.  “I’m not going to let myself get distracted by other things. If I’m in a room full people who are talking, I usually try to block them out and try to focus on what I’m doing.”

According to Genesee, another way in which bilinguals perform better than monolinguals is in cognitive ability. If a person asks to solve a problem or see alternative responses to a question, bilinguals often think more creatively than monolinguals, who can also do those types of tasks. Bilinguals, he said, may have a greater cognitive ability because they have more perspective and thus show more divergent thinking.

Genesee said, “Knowing more than one language can give you more perspective, which allows you to see the world in different ways and broadens people’s perspective, which makes them more insightful.”

Spolyar said she also believes that having more perspective can help bilinguals  in having an advantage to problem solving.

Spolyar said, “I really like Sudokus or just a regular puzzle. I solve them easily, and it could be related to being bilingual in just looking outside the box because I think bilingualism helps open your mind to new concepts and different cultures. Like when you are faced with a problem, most people, if they are born in one household, only look in the way that their parents brought them up to be. But I know French and English, so it gives me two different aspects on how things should be viewed, which is good. It helps me be more aware of  the world and a less biased point of view.”

Corey said even as a kid, she loved solving crossword puzzles because she solved them easily, and she said she agrees that her increased perspective may be connected to her ability to solve these puzzles easily.

“Being bilingual gives you a different perspective, a different way to think than the normal way. You not only have a totally different language, but also you have a totally different culture that you are familiar with, so for me it’s American culture and Brazilian culture,” Corey said. “One who only knows one language who grew up in a single culture may only know one way to figure a problem, but with different backgrounds, there are different perspectives to help figure that out.”

Although bilingualism offers potential cognitive advantages in problem solving and in staying more focused, Genesee said, in some ways neurocognitive advantages are not nearly as important as the advantages of knowing two languages in being able to communicate with more people.

Genesee said, “The big advantage of bilingualism that seems to be getting the least amount of attention nowadays is that when you know two languages, is that you can speak to more people and understand more people. The other advantages are real and important, but we should also recognize that language is ultimately about communication, so if you can communicate in two languages, you have lot of  advantages that other people don’t have.”