People who are bilingual throughout their lives, and use dual languages in everyday life, have some protection against cognitive impairment, a new study finds.
Bilingual older individuals had superior cognitive performance compared to older adults who only spoke one language, according to the report, which was published Feb. 20 in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.
Researchers went door-to-door in Bengaluru, India, to gather data from 1,234 people over the age of 60. The individuals had either no cognitive impairment (NCI), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or dementia. Then the team compared data on the individuals’ language status.
Dementia and mild cognitive impairment prevalence was higher in people who spoke one language than in bilinguals. There was better cognitive function in bilinguals than monolinguals with no cognitive impairment, too.
The news comes as another study published the same day in the same journal found that adolescent cognition predicted dementia risk 60 years later. General cognitive ability in high school was predictive of cognitive impairment later in life. Low education is a risk for cognitive impairment partially due to its association with cognitive ability, the researchers found. In addition to data from cognitive assessments on 2,477 people in the Project Talent Aging Study (PTAS), the researchers used responses from 6,491 people via a questionnaire.
“Adolescent cognitive ability had a direct effect on the risk of CI in addition to an indirect effect (18% to 30%) through educational attainment accrued after the assessment of cognitive ability,” the researchers wrote.
How much education a person got and their adolescent cognitive ability predicted cognitive complexity of the participant’s occupation. However, the complexity of their future job didn’t mediate the association between adolescent cognitive ability and cognitive impairment. The team thinks this could be because people who have more cognitively complex work have higher levels of education so cognitive complexity didn’t explain any unique variance beyond education, the authors wrote.
