会两门语言的人更聪明，有木有

作者：翟华

话说美国《纽约时报》3月17日刊登了科学杂志（Science）撰稿人Yudhijit Bhattacharjee一篇文章，题目是Why Bilinguals Are Smarter（为什么会两门语言的人更聪明）。文章引用科学家的观点说，双语的优势不仅在于能够与范围更广的人交谈，而且双语能力可让人更聪明，有助于改善与语言无关的认知能力，比只会单语的人较善于解决心理难题，还可以保护抗击老年痴呆症。今天美国驻华使馆的微博推介了这篇文章的中文译文，转载如下： 

 

与使用一种语言的情况相比较，在世界日益全球化的条件下使用两种语言有实际的明显优势。但近年来，科学家们已经开始证明，双语的优势甚至比能够与范围更广的人交谈更有根本的意义。有双语能力可让你更聪明。双语能力可以对大脑产生巨大影响，不仅有助于改善与语言无关的认知能力，甚至保护你抗击老年痴呆症。 

在双语问题上的这种观点比20世纪大部分时间人们所理解的双语问题迥然不同。研究人员、教育工作者和决策者长期以来认为从认知上讲，第二语言是一种干扰，阻碍孩子的学业和智力发展。 

他们所谓的干扰并没有错：有充分的证据显示，在具有双语能力的大脑里，两种语言系统都很活跃，甚至在只使用一种语言的情况下也是如此，从而造成一个系统妨碍另一个系统的情形。但研究人员发现，这种干扰并不是障碍，反而有点因祸得福，因为干扰迫使大脑解决内部冲突，促进头脑的运动，增强认知肌肉的锻炼。 

举例来说，会双语的人似乎比只会单语的人较善于解决某种心理难题。2004年，心理学家埃伦·比亚韦斯托克（Ellen Bialystok)和米歇尔·马丁-李(Michelle Martin-Rhee)做了一项研究，让双语和单语的学前儿童把计算机屏幕上兰圆圈和红方框的图形放入两个数字箱里——一个标明蓝方框，另一个标明红圆圈。 

作为第一项作业，孩子们先按颜色挑选，形状可以不同，蓝色的圆圈放在标有蓝方框的盒子里，红色方框放进标有红圆圈的盒子里。两组做得都相当轻松。接下来要求孩子们按形状挑选，难度更高，因为需要把图形放入颜色完全不同的箱子里。会双语的儿童完成这项任务比较快。 

许多此类研究的共同证据表明，双语活动可以提高大脑的所谓指令性功能——即指导我们集中注意力进行规划，解决问题以及履行其他各种要求脑力的任务的指挥系统。这些过程要求排除干扰，专心致志，注意力可随心所欲地从一件事转到另一件事，并在大脑里储存信息——如同开车时记住一系列指令一样。 

为什么两个同时活跃的语言系统相互争斗会提高这些方面的认知呢？不久前，研究人员仍然以为双语的优势主要源于通过压制一种语言系统而磨练出来的抑制力：这种抑制力被认为有助于培养双语头脑在其他情况下做到注意力不分散。但是，这个解释越来越缺乏说服力，因为研究表明，双语人员甚至在不需要抑制力的情况下也比会单语的人做得好，例如在纸上划一条线把一系列没有规律的数字从小到大连在一起。 

双语和单语之间的主要区别可能是更基本的：增强监测周围环境的能力。西班牙庞培法布拉大学（University of Pompeu Fabra）的研究员阿尔伯特科斯塔（Albert Costa）说：“使用双语必须常常进行语言切换——你可能与父亲用一种语言讲话，和母亲用另一种语言，需要随时注意身边的变化，如同开车时需要注意我们的周围的情况一样。”在一项比较使用德语和意大利语的双语人员和只会意大利语的单语人员从事监控工作的研究中，科斯塔先生和他的同事们发现，双语参试者不仅表现得更好，而且大脑参与监控部分的活动较少，表明他们的效率更高。 

从婴儿到老年人，双语的经历显然对大脑都有影响（有??理由认为，可能也适用于后来学习第二语言的人）。意大利里雅斯特国际高级研究学校（International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste)的艾格尼丝·科瓦奇（Agnes Kovacs) 2009年主持的一项研究把从出生就接触两种语言的7个月大的婴儿和在一种语言环境中成长起来的婴儿相比较。最初的一组实验先给婴儿一个音频提示，然后在屏幕的一侧显示一个木偶。两组婴儿都学会了看屏幕的一侧，等待木偶出现。但在后一组实验中，木偶开始出现在屏幕的另一侧，接触双语环境的婴儿很快就学会了把他们预期的注视方向切换到另一侧，而其他婴儿却没有这样做。 

双语的效果也已扩及到老年群体。最近，以加利福尼亚大学圣地亚哥分校（University of California, San Diego）神经科专家塔马?高兰（Tamar Gollan）为首的科学家对44名西班牙-英语双语的老年人进行了调查，通过比较个人使用每一种语言的熟练程度衡量他们的语言能力。调查发现，双语能力较高的个人较少出现痴呆和阿尔茨海默氏症的其他症状。双语能力越高，发病率越低。 

从来没有人对语言的力量产生任何怀疑。但是谁能想到，我们平常听到人们说的话以及我们自己的语言表达能够产生如此重大的影响。 

英语原文： 

SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.

In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.

The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function — a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind — like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.

Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.

The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.” In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it.

The bilingual experience appears to influence the brain from infancy to old age (and there is reason to believe that it may also apply to those who learn a second language later in life).

In a 2009 study led by Agnes Kovacs of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, 7-month-old babies exposed to two languages from birth were compared with peers raised with one language. In an initial set of trials, the infants were presented with an audio cue and then shown a puppet on one side of a screen. Both infant groups learned to look at that side of the screen in anticipation of the puppet. But in a later set of trials, when the puppet began appearing on the opposite side of the screen, the babies exposed to a bilingual environment quickly learned to switch their anticipatory gaze in the new direction while the other babies did not.

Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.

Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint? 

英语原文链接：

http://www./2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html 

中文译文链接：http://iipdigital./st/chinese/article/2012/04/201204123757.html#axzz1sAFk0lSqaxzz1sAFk0lSq