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This article discusses six benefits to bilingualism. It touches on matters like: increased attention/flexibility in learning; better understanding fo social cues; lower risk of dementia; smoother assimilation into schools; and better school performance and enjoyment. It cites current and past bilingual studies from UC Riverside, Harvard, and other top universities.

Multilingualism has been shown to have many social, psychological and lifestyle advantages, including superior ability to concentrate, solve problems and focus, better mental flexibility and multitasking skills. Moreover, researchers are finding a swathe of health benefits from speaking more than one language, including faster stroke recovery and delayed onset of dementia. A steady stream of studies over the past decade has shown that bilinguals outperform monolinguals in a range of cognitive and social tasks from verbal and nonverbal tests to how well they can read other people. Greater empathy is thought to be because bilinguals are better at blocking out their own feelings and beliefs in order to concentrate on the other person's.

Researchers have found that people who speak multiple languages are twice as likely to recover their mental functions after a stroke as those who speak one language. The study gathered data from 608 stroke patients in Hyderabad, India, who were assessed, among others, on attention skills and the ability to retrieve and organise information. Bilinguals and multilinguals have better cognitive reserve - an improved ability of the brain to cope with damaging influences such as stroke or dementia - due to the mental challenge of speaking multiple languages and switching between them.

This was a study looking at the use of elderspeak in a referential communication task. The study was used to determine if young adults paired with older adults, who stimulated dementia or acted normally, would change their fluency, prosody, grammatical complexity, semantic content, or discourse.