Some very interesting research coming out of Baycrest in Toronto in the February issue of Neuropsychologia. Essentially they examined the age of Dementia onset between monolingual and bilingual clients, finding that the bilingual group had a significantly later onset of the disorder. Mini-Mental (MMSE) and demographic characteristics (gender, age, education level) were not significantly different between the two groups.
This is one of several bilingualism studies that have been carried out at Baycrest of late including one that found decreased attention and cognitive difficulties in bilingual children and adults (note: I have not had a chance to review the cognitive/attention research but will post a review shortly).
Interestingly the results were based on an essentially eastern European language sample (25 languages with the highest prevalence of Polish, Yiddish, German, Romanian and Hungarian). I would be interested myself in seeing a anglophone / francophone / bilingual comparison.
You can CLICK HERE to read a review of the article.
The long and the short of it is that myself as a monolingual anglophone appears to be doomed! :)
